Forging Black Identity in Selected Children’s Poetry by Langston Hughes and Nikki Giovanni

Abstract

This paper exhibits some of the literary efforts exerted in order to assist in the process of forging the Black identity of Black children and young adults. It provides an examination of selected children’s poetry by a Black late literary figure: Langston Hughes (1902-1967), and a contemporary one: Nikki Giovanni (1943- ). The poems are studied with reference to William Cross’s racial scale of Black identity development (2000). In the poems under analysis, Hughes and Giovanni try to help Black children and young adults to overcome their identity crisis and develop a positive Black identity.