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Sunday, February 23, 2014

Blog Response to “Aunt Sue’s Stories” by Langston Hughes

     Given our assignment on characterization for this week, I was even more aware and amazed at the ways in which Langston Hughes managed to create such a vivid character in Aunt Sue with no physical description of her, no distinct facts about her current life. We only know that she is an aunt; that she holds a child in her lap, and most importantly that like all of us she is comprised of stories. “Aunt Sue has a head full of stories./ Aunt Sue has a whole heart full of stories” (1-2). It is with these lines that Hughes first makes the aunt real, that we understand how deeply these stories resonate within her. The stories so much a part of her foundation become a part of the child’s foundation as well when she shares them. “And the dark haired child knows” Hughes writes, “that Aunt Sue’s stories are real stories” (18).  The child comes to know his aunt’s past through what she tells him, and also comes to know his own. Looking at it through the lens of our own work with writing I find it fascinating how the same way the child comes to know his aunt through his stories, I as a reader came to know her as well, not just through the stories themselves, but through the braveness of the act of telling them.
     The stanza in which Hughes relates the aunt’s stories is beautiful, poignant in its repetition and in the simplistic yet intense images that fill the aunt’s mind. “Black slaves/ Working in the hot sun,/ And black slaves/ Walking in the dewy night,/ And black slaves/ Singing sorrow songs on the banks of a mighty river/ Mingle themselves softly/ In the flow of Aunt Sue’s voice,” (6-13). The figures of Aunt Sue’s past comes alive in these images, and so too does Aunt Sue herself.  I see the ghosts she carries within her and her power as she brings them back to life.

     I love this poem because though it is made up of so little, it carries the weight of so much. The character that Hughes creates in Aunt Sue holds within her a multitude of other characters and lives. I loved her because Hughes allowed me to see into her, to see her strength in her ability to share a painful past, to give it to the future.  Hughes creates an instant of reality, an exchange between two people, in which they both become known, in which their stories make them anew and bring them to life. For it is not only Aunt Sue we come to know through her stories, but the child through his. The narrator has taken up the burden and the blessing, telling a story of his own that allows us to come to know him as well. This poem contains stories within stories, characters within characters, and I love finding new depth each time I look at it.

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