Audre Lorde and Langston Hughes: The Monumental Poets of the Time

Audre Lorde, author of “Hanging Fire” and Langston Hughe, author of “Ballad of the Landlord” both amazing African-American poets who gave voice to issues like race and social justice. Through their poems they talked about issues like race and social justice, for example A Dream deferred by Hughes, which discusses how the American Dream falls short for African Americans because of their race. Also in “power” by Audre Lorde, which is a poem about a young 10 year old who was shot down by a cop which shows us racial violence and the poem being written shows us Audre Lorde wants social justice. 

Ballad of the Landlord and Hanging Fire use the theme discrimination to express the idea of being different and the impact it has on someone. In both Ballad of the landlord and hanging fire, discrimination can be seen through peoples actions on the protagonist of the poems. For example, in “Hanging Fire”, Lorde ends each of her stanzas with the mother shutting off her child.

I should have been on the math team.

My marks were better than his…

and mommas in the bedroom.

with the door closed. (Lorde 26-35)

Lorde shows us through the quote that not only is the teenager struggling with inequality at school but also that the mother isn’t guiding or supporting her through it. In the first two lines of the quote readers quickly pick up right away that a teenage girl is upset with the result that a boy who had whose marks than her had got on the math team while she, who had higher marks then the boy didn’t. This shows us the inequality young teenage girls have to face at schools across the nation. In the last two lines of the poem readers see that the mother of the teenage girl has completely shut herself off from her child, leaving her with unresolved thoughts, and many questions. In the poem Ballad of the Landlord readers also see unresolved things between the Landlord and the black man.

Landlord, Landlord.

My roof has sprung a leak.

Don’t you ‘member’ i told you about it.

Way last week? (Hughes 1-4)

Hughes starts off his poem with a black man, “again” complaining about his roof that had a leak, which he had already told the Landlord last week. This already shows the readers that there may be some conflict between the black man and landlord because after a week the black man still had a leak in his roof, which means the landlord had decided not to fix the leak even though the black man has now already asked twice. This action shows the readers that the Landlord is choosing to ignore the black man's request of fixing the leaking roof. What these quotes share is that they both show someone who has decided to ignore/shutoff the protagonist of the poems. 

In hanging fire the mother chose to shut herself off from her child, while in Ballad of the Landlord, the Landlord decides to disregard the black man's request of fixing the leak. The similarities between the two quotes are the antagonists in the poems, which in our case are the Landlord and mother are they decide to ignore the protagonist and disregard them as if they aren’t important to them. Yet, Authors like Hughes saves the more juicer part of the poems near the end.