Heroic "hussies" and "brilliant queers": genderracial resistance in the works of Langston Hughes

I will take your heart.

I will take your soul out of your body

As though I were God.

I will not be satisfied

With the little words you say to me.

I will not be satisfied

With the touch of your hand

Nor the sweet of your lips alone.

If we view "I" as the writer and "you" as the poetic subject, the poem stands as a reminder of the limits of poetic omniscence. It is this final elipse--"I will take your heart for mine. / I will take your soul. / I will be God when it comes to you" (Selected 62)--that signifies the power differential between writer and subject. Recognizing the role of one's own (multiple) consciousness in informing one's perspective on poetic subjects dissipates some of the "Godly" qualities of this omniscence. In recognizing distance, the writer's work is strengthened through a direct dialogue with the subject, centered in identity.

Hughes's discussion of identity focuses not only on his own role as a writer but on the role of literature in social transformation. In "Long Trip," which was written at sea, the sea, writing, and reading are connected. The writer observes that

The sea is a wildemess of waves,

A desert of water.

We dip and dive,

Rise and roll,

Hide and are hidden

On the sea.

Here, as in "Daybreak in Alabama," Hughes uses contrasting images to disrupt traditional imagery. Immersed in the shadowy sun glow beneath the surface, writers (and readers) "dip and dive," an image suggestive, as in "Old Walt," of searching. Hughes juxtaposes seemingly binary images, to blur the disparity between them:

Day, night

Night, day,

The sea is a desert of waves,

A wildemess of water. (Selected 52)

Through writing, Hughes takes his readers to places of vision, where traditional social constructs have been momentarily neutralized. It is significant that Hughes came to this space with a radical creativity centered in consciousness and identity. Hughes's genderracial dialogue offers an exciting contribution to discussion of the convergence of gender, race, and class in forming identity and envisioning social change through transcendent sensual imagery. In discussing Hughes's work, and the work of other authors, past and present, we must move beyond our reticence to speak of sex, gender, and race as informing their works. By exploring gender and race as inseparable players in the construction of identity, and by examining the interrogation of power through visionary fictions, we begin a new and rewarding dialogue on the poetic word.

Notes

(1.)In defining the erotic, Lorde distinguishes between the erotic and pornography, identifying pornography as a "direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling" (56).

(2.)Julien's film is a poetic pastiche which mixes past and present, reading Hughes in a gay context. Julien blends images of gay men in 1930s Harlem with contemporary visions of Black gay life, raising questions about Hughes's personal life, and the nature of sexual identity.