Sample Text from Class

Below is the sample text we used in today's class.

Some scholars have suggested that Hughes’s childhood in Harlem, surrounded by artists, poets, and musicians, played a major role in developing his artistic sensibilities (Smith 14; Jones 298).  What these scholars ignore, however, is that Hughes was probably not exposed to Harlem’s cultural elite on a regular basis.  Hughes grew up on 96^th street, in the center of the most poverty-ridden section of Harlem (Williams 39).  His father was a street sweeper and his mother worked in a laundry.  However, none of Harlem’s major jazz clubs and art galleries was below 110th street.  Although Hughes spent his childhood just fourteen blocks from Harlem’s glamorous intellectual center, he lived in a very different Harlem—one that was riddled with crime and poverty and was rapidly becoming a slum.  Of the “two Harlems” that jazz critic Ted Gioia suggests existed at the time (49), Hughes most definitely grew up in the impoverished one.  Although Hughes was certainly aware of the intellectual blossoming occurring in other parts of the city, he probably did not experience it on a daily basis.