Carolin Kotthaus

Soul Food in Langston Hughes' "Simple's Uncle Sam" Carolin Kotthaus

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,3, University of Wuppertal, course: Cultural Studies: As American as Apple Pie, language: English, abstract: This paper is going to deal with the poet and author Langston Hughes and his stories published under the title Simple's Uncle Sam during the era of Modernism and Postmodernism. I am going to begin with a short biographical overview about Langston Hughes' life. The information used, is taken from the Wikipedia website entry about Langston Hughes (en.wikipedia.org) but can also be found on more reliable websites (poemhunter.com; nathanielturner.com). Since this paper is part of the course 'As American as Apple Pie' which is concerned with the meaning of food scenes in different texts, I will present the topic of 'soul food'. I am going to explain where soul food has its roots and what it exactly is. Further I am going to show what important role soul food or food in general plays in the extracts of Simple's Uncle Sam and how it refers to the ethnical and cultural background of African Americans.