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GCSE English Literature · key term
A flourishing of Black literature, music and art centred on Harlem, New York, particularly during the 1920s. Langston Hughes was a leading figure.
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Paper 2
Revise: Theme for English BHughes (1901–1967) was born in Joplin, Missouri, and became a leading voice of the Harlem Renaissance, a flourishing of Black arts and culture. He spent a year at Columbia University, leaving because of racial prejudice, and graduated from Lincoln University in 1929. These experiences help explain the poem’s interest in education and exclusion.
Component 1
A flowering of Black literature, music, art and intellectual life centred on Harlem, New York, especially during the 1920s and 1930s.
Connect context to the moment you discuss: McKay’s migration illuminates the longing for home, while the Harlem Renaissance illuminates the celebration of cultural heritage.
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McKay was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, a flowering of Black cultural expression centred on Harlem in New York. The attention to village music and “native life” can be read as an affirmation of Jamaican heritage: cultural traditions are valuable sources of identity, not things to abandon after migration.
