Selina Lai-Henderson, associate professor of American literature and history at Duke Kunshan University, has made an important archival discovery: an unpublished poem titled “China” by celebrated African American poet Langston Hughes.
While researching Afro-Asian interactions in the 20th century, Lai-Henderson unearthed this brief but powerful piece from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. Written in August 1963 during a European tour, the poem, Lai-Henderson notes, reveals Hughes’s lasting support for China’s role in the global scene at a time when the poet had a fraught relationship with the U.S. government during the Cold War era.
“What I find striking about the poem is its deeply transnational context,” Lai-Henderson wrote. “It was written two days before the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would deliver his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, and just one day prior to W.E.B. Du Bois’s passing in Ghana.”
Lai-Henderson’s annotated analysis of the poem was published in The Yale Review in February 2024 to honor the anniversary of the poet’s birth. Her article delves into Hughes’s subtle yet potent commentary on China’s role in global struggles against oppression.
More on this insightful analysis can be found in The Yale Review.
