Perspectives

“Tales of Simple: Coffee Break” by Langston Hughes is a short story with a strong socio-political message and deals with a very sensitive topic for the time of its publication – the underlying racism of white Americans towards African- Americans, despite the latter being granted official civil rights.

For you to gain a better insight into the text, it is also necessary to be able to look at it in perspective, outlining aspects such as context, literary movement, and similar works.

Current issues

The text of the short story was published in 1965, and it reflected the realities of that time and targeted the American readership of the 1960s. But the issues and themes the text explores – racism and segregation in the USA – are still valid today to some extent.

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Works with the same theme

There is a wide range of literary works which deal with the status of African-Americans in the USA and correlated issues of discrimination, racism, and segregation.

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Textbook questions

In your textbook, you are asked to go deeper into issues related to the integration and reintegration the two characters talk about and the differences between “the negro” and “this negro”.

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