Introduction The process of writing either poetry or fiction does not happen in a vacuum. Writers of fiction are, first and foremost, the products of their cultural and historical contexts. Therefore, they are bound to respond to issues that are pertinent to their historical contexts as evidenced by their thematic concerns as well as to create characters and settings that are influenced by their experiences. Secondly, writers make use of literary forms such as the poem, the novel, or the short story, which are culturally prescribed. As such, the process of writing, and the literary works that are produced through it, could never be deemed innocent of either culture or history. In this essay, I will show that both culture and race have had a great impact on the works of Langston Hughes. To do that, I will rely on an analysis of his two poems, “Cross” and “Dream Variations”. The essay will be divided into two main parts; the first dealing with the racial influence on his works while the second will deal with the issue of cultural influence. Discussion The most obvious way of assessing the extent to which Langston Hughes responded to the historical context of his race in his work is to assess his thematic concerns. In analyzing the thematic concern dealt with within these two poems, one will be assessing how much his being from a black racial background influenced his work. The poem “Cross” is simple in both language and subject matter. In exploring its thematic concerns, however, one finds himself delving into a subject of such complexity as to defy any attempts to deem it simple. The persona of the poem is born of a black mother and a white father: “my old man’s a white old man/ And my old mother’s black” (Hughes). In racially sensitive America of the 1900s, however, this fact presents a great question regarding his identity. The society s/he is born into is sharply divided into two, and opposite, races: white and black. The white side of the population would not and could not, accept the persona as one of their own since the slightest of pigmentation in one’s skin automatically meant that they were no longer white (Firewriter). The persona is also shunned by the black side of the society since prejudice against those who are seen not to fully fit the idea of the black person existed. Black people in the United States practice a form of implicit racial segregation against people of mixed race such as the persona, who is felt to have a skin tone that is too light to be called black (Marpaung 11). The lighter the skin color, therefore, the harsher the rejection. Racial issues are also seen in the poem when the persona contrasts the death of his father against that of his mother: “My old man died in a fine big house. My ma died in a shack” (Hughes). Skin color, which was indicative of one’s race in racially segregated America determined one’s access to social amenities as well as to economic opportunity. That is why, the persona’s mother, being black, would have been offered no opportunity to better her condition thus eventually dying in a shack. The opposite was true for the persona’s white father, of great interest here is that the persona, being accepted by neither side of the racial divide, wonders exactly how he would die. This dilemma th