The Weary Blues Summary & Analysis
by Langston Hughes

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Langston Hughes's “The Weary Blues,” first published in 1925, describes a black piano player performing a slow, sad blues song. This performance takes place in a club in Harlem, a segregated neighborhood in New York City. The poem meditates on the way that the song channels the suffering and injustice of the black experience in America, transforming that suffering into something beautiful and cathartic. The poem thus reflects on the immense beauty of black art—and the immense pain that lies beneath it.

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