The role of African American literature in recent years has been to illuminate for the modern world the inherent sophistication and beauty of their culture, as well as the constant struggle they experience in the oppressive American system. When writers like Langston Hughes, W. E. B. DuBois, and Alice Walker present their material, they are able to convey to a future world the great depth of feeling and meaning that their particular culture has retained compared to the culture of their white counterparts. Without this preservation effort, much of the wealth of this community would have been lost or forgotten. At the same time, they highlighted some of the problems inherent in their society, including lack of education, lack of appreciation for one's worth, and lack of opportunities for the future. All three of these writers work to capture the important concepts of their society within the figurative elements of everyday life, urban or rural, as they are defined from within rather than without. In poems like Hughes's “Mother to Son,” W.E.B. DuBois's Souls of Black Folk, or Walker's short story “Everyday Use,” we begin to understand the unifying theme of the black community as a constant struggle between achieving a higher social status and more comfortable conditions while remaining deeply connected to the cultural and spiritual richness of their heritage and families. Rather than attempting to "befriend" the white man in hopes of gaining sympathy, the struggles to overcome slavery and the fight against overt oppression cannot go unnoticed in Hughes' poetry, as illustrated in "Mother to Son." In this poem, Hughes uses a metaphor to represent a mother as she explains to her son that he… middle of paper… However, this encouragement does not come without a cost, as illustrated. in Walker's "Everyday Use" in which Dee, who has been well educated and has achieved a standard of living comparable to that of the white urban middle class, loses some of her deep connection to her cultural heritage, a heritage that is a intrinsic part of his life. sister who lives there every day. The constant struggle of the black community to improve their condition while maintaining a close connection to their cultural past is therefore a constant theme throughout black literature. ReferencesDiYanni, R. (2007). Literature, reading fiction, poetry and drama (6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Du Bois, W. E. B. (1999). The souls of the black people. New York: W. W. Norton Company.Hughes, Langston. (1995). “From mother to son”. The LangstonHughes Poetry Collection. Vintage classics.