Taken by the sea wind: Langston Hughes and the currents of Black identity

Abstract

ABSTRACT Kevin Dawson has recently argued in Undercurrents of Power (2018) that waterscapes and aquatic culture played a crucial role in the African diaspora, and contemporary scholars “must move beyond landlocked paradigms.” This forms a necessarily transnational depiction of Black identity, one that eschews notions of nation and state. This essay follows Dawson’s lead by proposing a material confrontation with water vis-à-vis Langston Hughes. His writings emphasize this oceanic power of kinship by recurrently referencing waterways and transatlantic travel. More than merely tracing the appearance of water symbolism, this essay contends that these frequent literary allusions grant key insights into his burgeoning kinship with the greater African diaspora. Using Hughes’s emphasis on water as both metaphorical and material geographical space as the key example, this essay demonstrates the fertile application of an oceanic approach to the African diaspora.