POEMS AND QUOTES HUB

The Negro Mother Poem by Langston Hughes Langston Hughes,poet,the negro mother Children, I come back today To tell you a story of the long dark way That I had to climb, that I had to know In order that the race might live and grow. Look at my face - dark as the night - Yet shining like the sun with love's true light. I am the dark girl who crossed the red sea Carrying in my body the seed of the free. I am the woman who worked in the field Bringing the cotton and the corn to yield. I am the one who labored as a slave, Beaten and mistreated for the work that I gave - Children sold away from me, I'm husband sold, too. No safety, no love, no respect was I due. Three hundred years in the deepest South: But God put a song and a prayer in my mouth. God put a dream like steel in my soul. Now, through my children, I'm reaching the goal. Now, through my children, young and free, I realized the blessing deed to me. I couldn't read then. I couldn't write. I had nothing, back th

  I was walking down the street when a man stopped me and said, Hey yo sistah, you from the motherland? Because my skin is a shade too deep not to have come from foreign soil Because this garment on my head screams Africa Because my body is a beacon calling everybody to come flock to the motherland I said,  I’m Sudanese, why? He says,  ‘cause you got a little bit of flavor in you, I’m just admiring what your mama gave you Let me tell you something about my mama She can reduce a man to tattered flesh without so much as blinking Her words fester beneath your skin and the whole time, You won’t be able to stop cradling her eyes. My mama is a woman, flawless and formidable in the same step. Woman walks into a warzone and has warriors cowering at her feet My mama carries all of us in her body, on her face, in her blood and Blood is no good once you let it loose So she always holds us close. When I was 7, she cradled bullets in the billows of her robes. That same night, she taught me how to g