Langston Hughes
This memoir offers a portrait of the artist as a young man, to borrow the language used by James Joyce. That portrait shows an inquisitive and scrupulous child who is growing up as a poor, black child in a community with serious social challenges. His young life was during a time when the zeitgeist still tolerated a significant majority opinion which protects racism and disenfranchises the poor. This drives Langston to a thirst for education, suspecting that knowledge is the key to a better life.
Hughes's father
Langston's father takes care of him later in life, but he does not share any of Langston's academic interests. In fact, the sight of his son buried in books seems to the father to be a kind of lethargy and so Langston receives rejection from his father instead of approval. The father serves as a touchstone for how unusual such a child is in Langston's community. The father is largely unable to parent such a child because he does not understand what drives Langston's studies.
