Association News

Abstract

Langston Hughes' poem, "Mother to Son," is an admonition from parent to child to keep struggling to reach the goals and desires of one's life despite the barriers that may be placed in one's path. The mother reminds her son that "life for me ain't been no crystal stair." The poem addresses the character that one develops and the sustained optimism one must have to survive in a climate of racial segregation and discrimination, especially dominant during much of the twentieth century in America.