Hughes’s essay begins by describing the attitude of blacks to poetry and artistry. They didn’t want to be defined as “Negro poet[s]” but just as “poet[s]” (Hughes 1313) which Hughes takes to mean they want to be “white poet[s]” (1313). The Negro (to use Hughes’s term) culture defined good literature as white literature because that is what society has taught throughout history. Not only did whites subscribe to their own literary superiority but so did blacks. They would not recognize any blacks as great artists unless they were published by white magazines or recognized as significant artists by whites. “The road for the serious black artist, then, who would produce a racial art is most certainly rocky and the mountain is high. Until recently he received almost no encouragement for his work from either white or colored people” (1313). Colored artists felt like they had no freedom to truly write what they wanted if they were to be recognized in any way. Societal constructions built narrow parameters around what was considered good literature written by blacks.
In a similar way Annette Kolodny identifies “literature as a social institution, embedded not only within its own literary traditions, but also within the particular physical and mental artifacts of the society from which it comes” (Kolodny 2149). That social institution is traditionally a male society where literature uses the language of men. But if women have their own language with which to write, then it may be difficult for men to understand this language since they are used to their own. As Kolodny points out, if men are not able to understand this writing, then they will “dismiss those systems as undecipherable, meaningless, or trivial” (2150). If men do not accept women’s writings in their own language, then they will have to use male language which would still play into those social constructions unless women writers manipulated that language enough to stay true to their feminist ideals. In order to be accepted into literary circles, women must navigate “minefields” because they are not readily welcomed into that society.
Both Hughes and Kolodny recognize the difficulties of establishing new social constructions within the arts and more specifically literature. While Hughes might not have to navigate a minefield, he still has to climb a mountain and struggle to make whites, as well as colored people, realize the value and the good creative artists that are “Negros.” Kolodny struggles to bring acceptance in the literary circles and the literary canon for female authors who write with women’s language. Hughes and Kolodny write against the dominant white male culture that has defined literary history. Not only has this dominance affected white male approaches to literature, but it has also affected the communities that Hughes and Kolodny write about.