Explication of "Cross"

Langston Hughes is the author of the poem "Cross" the speaker of the poem is  half black and half white. It is unclear if the speaker is a male or a female. This poem was written during a time period when slavery was very common and the poem's setting is probably somewhere down south. The poem addresses a major issue from this time period, an issue that went ignored and unpunished for many years, the tendency of white male slave owners to rape their female slaves. This was just another way for the men to assert control over their slaves and a way to make them feel even weaker and more helpless.

The speaker makes it clear that he resented his/her white father for a long time for what he did to his mother. However, in the poem the speaker seems to be forgiving him and actually apologizing for talking poorly of him: "If I ever cursed my white old man / I take my curses back." It seems strange to me that he would feel the need to apologize for hating the man who raped his/her mother and probably never acted as a proper father towards the speaker. The speaker also talks about how he resented and wished ill upon his mother for a long time. I wonder why that is, was it because she may have not treated him/her well because the speaker was a physical representation and a constant reminder of her rape and the evil of the white man? I wonder if she was not much of a mother to  the speaker. In the poem the speaker also apologizes for his/her resentment towards her.

The speaker then addresses the death of each of his parents. When he talks about their deaths he makes it clear how different their lives were: "My old man died in a fine big house. / My ma died in a shack." The speaker's father had so much power over his mother. He lived an easy life while she lived the most difficult one imaginable. Each of his parents came from different worlds and he did not belong to either: "I wonder where I'm gonna die, / Being neither white nor black?" As hard as the speaker's mother's life was at least she had a place she belonged and people she could relate to. Being both black and white the speaker probably did not fit in anywhere, blacks would hate him/her for being part white, and whites would hate him for being part black therefore he had no where to turn. The poem does a good job of portraying how alone the speaker must have felt and how he resented his parents for so long.