Cora Unashamed

“Cora Unashamed,” by Langston Hughes, was first published in his 1934 short story collection The Ways of White Folks. Like the collection as a whole, “Cora Unashamed“ explores racial consciousness and the relationships between Black and white individuals and communities. Known for his literary contributions to the Harlem Renaissance movement, a revival of African American culture in the 1920s and 1930s, Hughes wrote about Black identity and the experiences of African Americans in a segregated society. Hughes was a respected and popular writer during his lifetime. Since 1978, City College of New York has awarded the Langston Hughes Medal to African American diaspora writers in celebration of Hughes’s memory.

“Cora Unashamed” is about a Black woman in a rural Midwestern town who feels trapped by her dependence on her white employers. Through the loss of her own child and the eventual death of the white child she has helped raise, Cora confronts cultural expectations of humility and shame. The unconditional love and support she gives her employers’ child emphasize, by contrast, their hypocrisy and superficiality. Hughes’s application of narrative voice, euphemism, metaphor, and irony contribute to a poignant criticism of segregated society. The story inspired a 2000 film adaptation of the same name, starring Regina Taylor and Cherry Jones. The film garnered cinematographer Ernest Holzman an American Society of Cinematographers Award.

This study guide refers to the version of “Cora Unashamed” in the 1990 Vintage Classics edition of The Ways of White Folks.

Content Warning: The source text features slurs and racial epithets including the n-word, which is quoted and obscured in this study guide.

The story, which is divided into three parts, opens with a description of Melton, “one of those sad American places” with a collection of nondescript buildings and no charm (3). Cora Jenkins is a 40-year-old woman who has lived all her life in Melton. Despite being an “inoffensive soul,” she is a member of the town’s only Black family and is treated rudely and called racist slurs. Cora works for the Studevants, who use her as a maid, nanny, nurse, laborer, and everything in between. The Studevants treat Cora like a dog, but she accepts it, believing her only other options are working for an even meaner family or poverty.

Through backstory, Cora’s childhood circumstances are revealed, explaining how she came to be stuck in a job and a life so dependent on people who see her as less than. Her father, Pa, is an alcoholic who makes too little money from his odd jobs to support his eight children. Cora’s mother, Ma, is always sick. It’s left to Cora to help raise her seven younger siblings. She drops out of school in eighth grade to work for the Studevants, putting her wages toward keeping her family fed and housed. Cora’s siblings all move away when they come of age, but Cora feels obligated to stay in Melton to care for the ailing Ma.

The backstory continues, revealing that Cora previously fell in love with a white man named Joe, a foreigner who worked at the livery stable. When their relationship results in a pregnancy, Joe leaves town. Cora goes back to work for the Studevants after taking time off to have the baby, a daughter she names Josephine. Around the same time, the Studevants have a daughter named Jessie, whom Cora nurses and helps rear. Cora encourages Jessie and Josephine to play together as they pass from infancy to toddlerhood, but Jessie’s parents put a stop to this, insisting Cora leave Josephine at home so she can “get her work done better” (8). Then Josephine dies of whooping cough.

In an uncharacteristic show of anger, Cora curses God for taking her baby from her. But the next week, she returns to work and is once again gentle and humble, willing to redirect all her motherly love and affection onto Jessie Studevant.

Part 2 begins after the passage of many years. Jessie, now 19 and less academically gifted than her older siblings, is on the verge of graduating a year late from high school. Her impending departure for college saddens Cora, who has formed an intimate bond with her. Jessie’s family thinks of her as somewhat stupid and strange, if they think of her at all. Around Cora, though, Jessie becomes witty and joyful and shows promise as a wonderful cook. Caring for Jessie makes Cora feel as though she still has a child of her own, and it gives her life purpose.

When Jessie confides to Cora that she has a boyfriend and is pregnant, Cora agrees to help break the news to Mrs. Studevant, seeing no shame in it. She knows Jessie wants to marry the baby’s father and relays the idea to Mrs. Studevant as a plausible option. She is surprised by Mrs. Studevant’s hysterical reaction; she screams about scandal and confines Jessie to her room.

The aftermath of Jessie’s revelation opens Part 3. Mrs. Studevant and her female relatives whisper behind closed doors, deciding Jessie’s fate. Cora tries to comfort Jessie in the following days, assuring her she’ll get married and everything will be fine, but Mrs. Studevant hurries Jessie out of town and forces her to have a secret abortion. When they return, Jessie appears pale and thin, and the light has gone out of her eyes. The girl refuses to eat and grows steadily weaker until she dies only a month later.

Jessie’s funeral proceeds uneventfully on a beautiful spring afternoon, with her school classmates and the Women’s Club in attendance. Just before the ceremony is brought to a close, Cora addresses the gathering and accuses the Studevants of killing Jessie and her baby. The men of the family have to physically remove Cora from the room to stop her public indictment. Once she calms down, Cora gathers her belongings, leaves the Studevants’ home, and never returns. Instead, she lives off Pa’s small income and the garden that she and Ma raise. Even without a salary from a white family, they manage to get along.