The Full Text of “Aunt Sue's Stories”
1Aunt Sue has a head full of stories.
2Aunt Sue has a whole heart full of stories.
3Summer nights on the front porch
4Aunt Sue cuddles a brown-faced child to her bosom
5And tells him stories.
6Black slaves
7Working in the hot sun,
8And black slaves
9Walking in the dewy night,
10And black slaves
11Singing sorrow songs on the banks of a mighty river
12Mingle themselves softly
13In the flow of old Aunt Sue's voice,
14Mingle themselves softly
15In the dark shadows that cross and recross
16Aunt Sue's stories.
17And the dark-faced child, listening,
18Knows that Aunt Sue's stories are real stories.
19He knows that Aunt Sue never got her stories
20Out of any book at all,
21But that they came
22Right out of her own life.
23The dark-faced child is quiet
24Of a summer night
25Listening to Aunt Sue's stories.
The Full Text of “Aunt Sue's Stories”
1Aunt Sue has a head full of stories.
2Aunt Sue has a whole heart full of stories.
3Summer nights on the front porch
4Aunt Sue cuddles a brown-faced child to her bosom
5And tells him stories.
6Black slaves
7Working in the hot sun,
8And black slaves
9Walking in the dewy night,
10And black slaves
11Singing sorrow songs on the banks of a mighty river
12Mingle themselves softly
13In the flow of old Aunt Sue's voice,
14Mingle themselves softly
15In the dark shadows that cross and recross
16Aunt Sue's stories.
17And the dark-faced child, listening,
18Knows that Aunt Sue's stories are real stories.
19He knows that Aunt Sue never got her stories
20Out of any book at all,
21But that they came
22Right out of her own life.
23The dark-faced child is quiet
24Of a summer night
25Listening to Aunt Sue's stories.
-
“Aunt Sue's Stories” Introduction
-
"Aunt Sue's Stories" appears in Langston Hughes's first poetry collection, The Weary Blues (1926). It describes an older woman, "Aunt Sue," who tells a young child stories about her own and others' experiences under slavery. The poem honors the value of Black storytelling, illustrating how Black history and the reality of slavery have been preserved through the oral tradition and passed down through generations.
-
-
“Aunt Sue's Stories” Summary
-
The speaker says that Aunt Sue's mind and heart are practically bursting with stories. On summer evenings, a young Black boy sits on the front porch with her, his face pressed against her chest, and she shares her stories with him.
She tells him about enslaved Black people toiling in the summer heat, enslaved Black people treading through the wet night, and enslaved Black people singing heart-wrenching songs beside a powerful river. All these stories mix gently together in the rhythm of his aunt's storytelling voice. They seem to mix gently with the dark silhouettes that move back and forth in her stories.
The young Black boy understands that his aunt's stories are true. She didn't read them in some book—they're stories of her actual life.
He sits there in complete silence on those summer nights, paying close attention to his aunt's tales of the past.
-
-
“Aunt Sue's Stories” Themes
-
Storytelling and Family Memory
“Aunt Sue’s Stories” portrays storytelling as a powerful means of preserving family memory and connecting generations. The speaker describes a child (perhaps a younger version of himself) listening reverently to Aunt Sue's stories about “her own life.” Listening to elders’ stories, the poem suggests, is a way of keeping the past alive, connecting with one’s ancestors, and better understanding where one comes from. The poem also specifically illustrates the importance of storytelling within Black communities, whose oral traditions have long been vital means of preserving knowledge and strengthening cultural ties.
The poem describes “Summer nights” on which Aunt Sue “cuddles” a young boy—likely her nephew—against her chest and shares stories from her life. The tenderness of the scene suggests the love bond they share and implies that storytelling is a means of bringing generations closer together. Aunt Sue isn’t telling stories solely to entertain the boy, however, but to help him understand where he comes from and what his family has lived through. In sharing “real” stories of “her own life” during slavery, the speaker’s aunt passes her memories on to the next generation and ensures that her experiences won’t be forgotten.
By listening quietly and paying close attention to his aunt’s stories, the child does his part in keeping his family’s memories alive. The child is “quiet” when his aunt speaks, seemingly solemn with the knowledge that his aunt’s stories “are real stories” that come “Right out of her own life.” Taking these stories in, the poem suggests, is a way of respecting and protecting his family’s history. (Again, the child may represent a younger version of the speaker, so the poem itself may be a means of carrying on this legacy.)
The poem also nods to the significance of oral storytelling traditions in Black families. Oral storytelling has specific relevance for Black Americans, who, by and large, were unable to write down their experiences in Aunt Sue’s time. Because laws forbade enslaved people from learning to read and write, Black people of this period kept their stories alive primarily through spoken word and song. This practice also connected Black people to their African ancestors, many of whose cultures had rich oral traditions that slaveholders forcibly suppressed. By listening to Aunt Sue’s stories, then, the child honors his immediate ancestors as well as his deeper ancestry. Storytelling, in this poem, preserves both familial and cultural memory.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
-
Black History and the Legacy of Slavery
Hughes’s poem conveys the importance of acknowledging the legacy of slavery. Aunt Sue’s stories aren’t about just anything: they are specifically tales of “Black slaves” and their “sorrow songs.” The poem suggests that the “dark shadows” of slavery fall across time and generations; slavery’s legacy continues to affect the lives of those born after it ended.
The speaker explains that stories of “Black slaves” toiling night and day come together “In the flow of old Aunt Sue’s voice.” They “Mingle themselves softly” in her words, suggesting that her stories are a kind of tapestry weaving together countless Black experiences. Her stories ensure that the next generation will know the “sorrow songs” their elders once sang. That is, they will understand the pain and trauma that enslaved people endured.
Even the listening “child” knows his aunt’s stories are “real” and don't come from “any book at all.” In other words, these stories aren’t fairy tales, folklore, or myths. By stressing their “real[ity],” the poem suggests the importance of knowing the truth about one’s heritage. The speaker’s insistence that Aunt Sue's stories are “real” is an insistence on the reality of slavery itself—a refusal to mythologize, gloss over, or forget what people like Aunt Sue lived through. When Aunt Sue describes “Black slaves / Working in the hot sun,” she isn’t dredging up ancient history—she’s talking about her own life and people she knew: her own relatives, friends, and so on. Hearing her recount these stories, the child (who may be a younger version of the speaker) grasps that he isn’t far removed from the “sorrow” of slavery. As he absorbs her stories, the child takes on the weight of that sorrow.
The poem therefore illustrates how the legacy of slavery didn’t disappear the moment slavery ended. For later generations of Black Americans, its trauma lives on. Knowing what their ancestors lived through, the poem suggests, helps them understand their own lives.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
-
-
Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Aunt Sue's Stories”
-
Lines 1-5
Aunt Sue has a head full of stories.
Aunt Sue has a whole heart full of stories.
Summer nights on the front porch
Aunt Sue cuddles a brown-faced child to her bosom
And tells him stories.The poem begins by describing a woman known simply as "Aunt Sue," who is hugging a "child" and telling him "stories." Aunt Sue may be the child's aunt, the speaker's, or both (if the child is interpreted as the speaker's younger self). The language of the opening lines is plain and full of repetition:
Aunt Sue has a head full of stories.
Aunt Sue has a whole heart full of stories.Notice the use of anaphora (the repetition of "Aunt Sue has a"), epistrophe (the repetition of "full of stories"), and more general parallelism (these sentences are structured in the exact same way). All of this repetition creates instant rhythm and musicality, carrying readers along as if they, too, are privy to "Aunt Sue's Stories."
At the same time, the parallelism draws attention to the few words that aren't repeated: "head" and "whole heart." In this way, the poem juxtaposes having a "head full of stories" and a "whole heart full" of them, suggesting that the two are subtly different. Aunt Sue isn't just someone who likes to dream up tall tales or recite interesting anecdotes; rather, she's someone who carries so many stories inside of her that she's practically overflowing with them. That they come from the "heart" suggests they are deeply significant to her; they are either personal memories or the memories of those who came before her and likewise passed them down.
Repetition isn't the only effect that creates rhythm and emphasis here. This first stanza is also full of alliteration and sibilance. The /h/ sounds in "head" and "whole heart," for example, further stress the contrast between stories that come from the mind and those that come from deep inside. Aunt Sue seems to have both, but the stronger alliteration of "whole heart" places greater emphasis on the second kind.
Meanwhile, sibilance adds to the poem's gentle tone:
Summer nights on the front porch
Aunt Sue cuddles a brown-faced child to her bosom
And tells him stories.The soft /s/ and /z/ sounds mirror the softness of Aunt Sue's embrace as she "cuddles" this "child to her bosom." They also suggest the tenderness with which she shares her stories.
The poem is written in free verse, so it doesn't use a meter or rhyme scheme. Instead, its repetition and alliteration create more natural, conversational rhythms. In this way, its sound matches its subject: intimate storytelling. These free-flowing, yet rhythmic lines evoke Aunt Sue's kind of narration: sitting on "front porch[es]" during the "Summer," holding a relative close, and speaking from the "heart."
-
Lines 6-11
Black slaves
Working in the hot sun,
And black slaves
Walking in the dewy night,
And black slaves
Singing sorrow songs on the banks of a mighty river -
Lines 12-16
Mingle themselves softly
In the flow of old Aunt Sue's voice,
Mingle themselves softly
In the dark shadows that cross and recross
Aunt Sue's stories. -
Lines 17-22
And the dark-faced child, listening,
Knows that Aunt Sue's stories are real stories.
He knows that Aunt Sue never got her stories
Out of any book at all,
But that they came
Right out of her own life. -
Lines 23-25
The dark-faced child is quiet
Of a summer night
Listening to Aunt Sue's stories.
-
-
“Aunt Sue's Stories” Symbols
-
The River
The "mighty river" in line 11 almost certainly refers to the Mississippi River. For enslaved Americans, the Mississippi was a symbol of sorrow and trauma. Slaveholders frequently broke up enslaved families and shipped enslaved individuals down the Mississippi to other plantations ("sold them down the river"). Hence the river's association with "sorrow songs," which were laments for lost family and friends.
In the poem, the river is also symbolically associated with the flow of time, the flow of narrative, and the continuity of generations. The "songs" sung by the river, for example, return in "the flow of old Aunt Sue's voice" (line 13), as if Aunt Sue's stories were carrying on her ancestors' (and/or her own) experiences by the Mississippi. Just as a river flows inexorably on its course, the poem suggests, time hurries on, one generation creates the next, and stories travel down the centuries.
- See where this symbol appears in the poem.
-
-
“Aunt Sue's Stories” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
-
Repetition
The poem uses repetition to create rhythm and musicality while mirroring the way stories get passed down from one generation to the next.
Lines 1-2, for example, use a combination of anaphora, epistrophe, and more general parallelism:
Aunt Sue has a head full of stories.
Aunt Sue has a whole heart full of stories.The repetition underscores who is telling these stories (Aunt Sue) and how many of them there are (she's "full" of them). Because these lines are almost identical, the repetition also highlights the few words that don't repeat: "head" and "whole heart." The shift from "head" to "heart" suggests these stories aren't just something Aunt Sue thought up for entertainment; they're memories that live deep inside her.
Anaphora, epistrophe, and parallelism occur frequently throughout the rest of the poem. Take a look at lines 6-11:
Black slaves
Working in the hot sun,
And black slaves
Walking in the dewy night,
And black slaves
Singing sorrow songs on the banks of a mighty riverUsing anaphora ("Black slaves"/"And black slaves") followed by parallel clauses, these lines create a strong rhythm that evokes both Aunt Sue's "flow[ing]" voice and the "sorrow songs" she's recalling. Lines 12 and 14 then consist of the identical phrase "Mingle themselves softly." This repetition underscores the fact that Aunt Sue is weaving many other stories into her own.
After the epistrophe in lines 1-2, the word "stories" appears again and again at the ends of lines (namely, lines 5, 16, 18, 19, and 25). By landing on this word repeatedly, the poem suggests the way storytelling links the past with the present and future. Aunt Sue is passing on her stories to the "child" (presumably her nephew), who is likely to continue this tradition. In the process, she's passing down important knowledge about her family and culture.
The poem features other kinds of repetition, too. Line 15, for example, contains polyptoton:
In the dark shadows that cross and recross
This effect again suggests the way Aunt Sue's stories weave together the past and present. The "shadows that cross" her stories are the lives of people who are no longer around to relate their experiences. They "recross," perhaps, when they appear in more than one story. Her voice is like a net holding all these experiences together.
Finally, the poem contains a few widely spaced repetitions, such as "Summer nights"/"summer night" in lines 3 and 24, "Listening" in lines 17 and 25, and "brown-faced child"/"dark-faced child" in lines 4, 17, and 23. "Aunt Sue's" name also appears at least once in each stanza. These repetitions heighten the musicality of the language while fixing the poem's setting, action, and characters in the reader's mind.
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
Sibilance
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
Alliteration
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
Enjambment
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
-
"Aunt Sue's Stories" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Bosom
- Dewy
- Mingle
-
Chest.
- See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.
-
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Aunt Sue's Stories”
-
Form
The poem's 25 lines of free verse are split up into four stanzas of varying lengths. Rather than following a conventional form (such as a sonnet), the poem flows freely, changing its shape and rhythm as it goes along. Lines range in length from very short (such as line 6, which is only 2 syllables long) to quite long (line 11 is 14 syllables). The poem's free-flowing movement is evocative of Aunt Sue's own storytelling: she isn't reciting stories she found in a "book," but is simply sharing her own memories.
The poem uses a great deal of repetition, which echoes the passing down of stories from generation to generation. (Notice, for example, how the word "stories" itself repeats at the ends of lines 1, 2, 5, 16, 18, 19, and 25, and ends three of the four stanzas.) Hughes's free-flowing use of repetition and variation is also evocative of jazz music. (Jazz, the blues, and Black American music in general were major influences on Hughes's poetry; "Aunt Sue's Stories" appears in the collection he titled The Weary Blues). In this way, the poem draws on, and further honors the value of, Black cultural and artistic traditions.
-
Meter
The poem is written in free verse, meaning that it doesn't use meter (or a rhyme scheme). Like many other English-language poets of the early 20th century, Hughes frequently varied or turned away from the strict poetic conventions of the past. Sometimes he altered traditional meters to sound more like jazz or blues rhythms; sometimes, as here, he sought to write verse that sounded more like the way people actually talk.
The poem's lack of meter also reflects the background and narrative style of its central character. Aunt Sue comes from a line of enslaved Black Americans who did not have access to traditional education, and whose stories therefore did not sound like stories from "book[s]." Instead, Aunt Sue shares her stories from the "heart," and the poem's loose, colloquial rhythms reflect that fact.
-
Rhyme Scheme
As a free verse poem, "Aunt Sue's Stories" doesn't follow a rhyme scheme. Whereas rhyme would have felt calculated and carefully wrought—like something out of a "book"—the poem's loose, conversational language reflects the heartfelt way Aunt Sue tells stories from "her own life." Instead of rhyme or meter, the poem relies on other sonic devices, such as repetition and alliteration, to create musicality and evoke the "songs" the poem hearkens back to.
-
-
“Aunt Sue's Stories” Speaker
-
The poem's speaker might be a detached third-person narrator, telling a story about members of their community. Alternatively, the speaker might be describing their own "Aunt Sue." They might even be a grown-up version of the "brown-faced child" who once sat listening to his aunt's stories. That is, the speaker may be looking back on his childhood and recalling time spent with his aunt. (The familiar way the speaker refers to "Aunt Sue" hints at a personal connection, but it's never clear that Sue is the speaker's aunt, as opposed to the aunt of a separate "child.")
Finally, the speaker might be a version of Hughes himself. Some critics have speculated that "Aunt Sue" is based on Hughes's grandmother Mary, a major influence in his early life. Whether or not the poem is directly autobiographical, Hughes unquestionably knew older Black people in his family and community who had lived through slavery and shared memories of that time with him.
-
-
“Aunt Sue's Stories” Setting
-
The poem takes place during the childhood of Aunt Sue's nephew (the "brown-faced child"), during "Summer nights" when he sits "on the front porch" with his aunt. These times are portrayed as intimate and tender, as Aunt Sue "cuddles" him to her chest while she speaks.
The memories that Aunt Sue recalls, however, are from an earlier time: a time when she and other Black Americans were enslaved. (Presumably, this would have been before 1865, when the 13th Amendment formally abolished slavery in the U.S.) In this not-so-distant period, people like the speaker's aunt toiled beneath a "hot sun," and perhaps "Walk[ed]" to freedom under cover of "night." They also sang beside a "mighty river": most likely the Mississippi River, where Black people were often separated from loved ones by slavers who took them away to distant plantations.
-
-
Literary and Historical Context of “Aunt Sue's Stories”
-
Literary Context
Langston Hughes was one of the leading poets of a period of literary and artistic history known as the Harlem Renaissance. This period saw a flourishing of Black art, literature, and culture centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. At this time, prominent poets like Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer sought new ways of expressing Black experiences.
Hughes became known for his use of colloquial speech in his jazz- and blues-inspired or free verse poems, as well as his attempts to express a collective Black American experience. He admired Walt Whitman, who is sometimes known as the father of American free verse and who similarly tried to represent American experience on a grand scale. He was also moved by other poets, such as Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Carl Sandburg, who sought to incorporate the rhythms of ordinary life and work into their poetry.
"Aunt Sue's Stories" was published in Hughes' first book of poems, The Weary Blues, in 1926. The book immediately garnered praise and won several awards, the money from which allowed Hughes to complete his college education. He intended the poems to be performed with musical accompaniment in clubs around Harlem.
This poem, in particular, draws on Black oral traditions. Through centuries of American slavery, Black people passed on stories verbally, as most slaveholders barred them from learning to read or write. Some of these stories were set to music and sung out loud during work. For poets like Hughes, embracing the rhythms of this oral tradition was a way of keeping it alive even as Black American culture changed. Thus, "Aunt Sue's Stories" embraces and honors Black history and tradition.
Historical Context
Langston Hughes was born in 1901, only 36 years after slavery was abolished in the United States. Hughes felt the legacy of slavery keenly; both of his paternal great-grandmothers had been enslaved, while both of his paternal great-grandfathers had been slaveholders. His father left the family when Hughes was just a baby, traveling outside the U.S. in search of a life not hemmed in by persistent racism. Meanwhile, Hughes's mother spent most of his childhood traveling in search of work.
As a result, Hughes was primarily raised by his maternal grandmother, Mary Patterson Langston. Mary Langston is often considered to be the inspiration for "Aunt Sue's Stories," as, like "Aunt Sue," she passed down stories about her family history and American racism to young Hughes. She taught Hughes to take pride in his heritage and see the value in Black people's "real stories," which had been sidelined and neglected by white writers.
Hughes never lost the sense of duty his grandmother instilled in him. In his poems, ordinary Black people saw and heard their own lives reflected back to them. In this way, Hughes' work was always in service of uplifting and honoring Black people, as well as crafting authentic portraits of American society.
-
-
More “Aunt Sue's Stories” Resources
-
External Resources
-
Read About Hughes' First Poetry Collection — An overview of The Weary Blues, the collection in which "Aunt Sue's Stories" was originally published, via the Academy of American Poets.
-
More About the Poet — A Poetry Foundation biography of Langston Hughes.
-
An Introduction to the Harlem Renaissance — Read about the literary movement of which Hughes was a part.
-
An Introduction to Jazz Poetry — Read about a specific kind of poetry Hughes helped establish.
-
The Public vs. Private Hughes — Read an article by writer and critic Hilton Als about Hughes's careful public persona and the complex, real person behind the poems.
-
Listen to the Poet Read — A recording of Hughes reading several of his poems, including "Aunt Sue's Stories."
-
-
LitCharts on Other Poems by Langston Hughes
-
