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African American Literature Book Club - The #1 Site for "Readers of Black Literature" |
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Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, in 1902. He
traveled all over the world-to Europe, Africa, Mexico, the Soviet Union but his heart and
home were in Harlem, where he was one of the most versatile writers of the artistic
movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. Though known primarily
as a poet, Hughes also wrote plays, essays, novels, short stories, and books for children.
His writing is characterized by simplicity and realism and, as he once said, "people
up today and down tomorrow, working this week and fired the next, beaten and baffled, but
determined not to be wholly beaten."
-Bio from liner cover, Black
Misery, Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195146433 February 1, 2002 marks the hundredth anniversary of Langston Hughes's birth. To commemorate this occasion, Arnold Rampersad has contributed new Afterwords to both volumes of his highly-praised biography of this most extraordinary American writer. In this stunning second volume, Rampersad traces Hughes's life from the humiliations of 1940-41, with his career in jeopardy, to his death in 1967, by which time he was revered not only as the dean of Afro-American writers but also as a an artist whose poems, plays, and stories had profoundly influenced writers worldwide. It shows Hughes re-examining his vision of art and radicalism during World War II, when he contributed steadily to the national war effort even as he relentlessly attacked segregation in his country. It recounts his relationships with younger, writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, and Amiri Bakara, and tells of his surveillance by the FBI and his hounding by right-wing forces, including Senator Joe McCarthy, who eventually forced him to testify about his radical years. In his Afterword to this second volume, Rampersad details the fresh challenges he faced as a biographer covering Hughes's retreat from radicalism around 1941, and the sustained attacks on him during the McCarthy era. He charts Hughes's renewal of himself as a poet and writer with a deep commitment to African-Americans, and investigates the author's desire for harmony and justice for all peoples. In addition, Rampersad explores the controversial matter of Hughes's sexuality and the possibility that, despite a lack of clear evidence, Hughes was homosexual. Exhaustively researched in archival collections throughout the country, especially in the Langston Hughes papers at Yale University's Beinecke Library, and featuring fifty illustrations, this anniversary edition offers a new generation of readers entrance to the life and mind of one of the twentieth century's greatest artists.
ISBN: 0195146425 Poet, playwright, novelist, and a grand figure in the Harlem
Renaissance of the 1920s, Langston Hughes stands as one of the most
extraordinary and prolific American writers of this century. As the first
installment of a two-volume biography, this portrait of Langston Hughes
depicts his life from his birth in Missouri in 1902 to the winter of 1941.
Format: Paperback, 1st ed., 256pp. From Sacred
Fire These stories move from poignant to funny, to seething with rage, often within a paragraph. And life, as it is painted here, is bleak and unchanging until death. Hughes's characters inhabit a world where people are mean because they can be, and where hard work is all that is guaranteed; these were the harsh realities for blacks in America in the twenties and thirties. If, as Du Bois contended in his book, "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line," this collection allows Hughes to illustrate that point time and again. He demonstrates to white readers what he and his black readers knew: "White folks is white folks, South or North, North or South." This is the concept he used to structure his seemingly mundane yet tragic tales. "Cora Unashamed" reveals how lifelong servitude can render the servant almost invisible, even to herself. In "Passing," a mixed-race black passes for white, forever denying his race and family: "I felt like a dog, passing you downtown last night and not speaking to you. You were great, though, didn't give a sign that you even knew me, let alone that I was your son." From North to South, light to dark, prosperous to dirt poor, all the stories are bound together and made powerful by the fact that they were all regular occurrences at that time in the United States. Within his simple stories, Hughes offered a barbed and trenchant analysis of white behavior and black behavior. Like his poems, the cruel accuracy of The Ways of White Folks is a reminder to Americans of some hard truths about the ridiculous and tragic ways skin color warps our lives.
Carl Van Vechten, Emily Bernard Format: Hardcover, 388pp. From the Publisher They discussed literature and publishing. They exchanged favorite blues lyrics ("So now I know what Bessie Smith really meant by 'Thirty days in jail / With ma back turned to de wall,'" Hughes wrote Van Vechten after a stay in a Cleveland jail on trumped-up charges). They traded stories about the hottest parties and the wildest speakeasies. They argued politics. They gossiped about the people they knew in common — James Baldwin, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, H. L. Mencken. They wrote from near (of racism in Scottsboro) and far (of dancing in Cuba and trekking across the Soviet Union), and always with playfulness and mutual affection. Today Van Vechten is a controversial figure; some consider him exploitative, at best peripheral to the Harlem Renaissance—or, indeed, as the author of the novel Nigger Heaven, a blemish upon it, and upon Hughes by association. The letters tell a different, more subtle and complex story: Van Vechten did, in fact, help Hughes (and many other young black writers) to get published; Hughes in turn appreciated what Van Vechten was trying to do in Nigger Heaven and defended him, fiercely. For all their differences, Hughes and Van Vechten remained staunchly loyal to each other throughout their lives. A correspondence of great cultural significance, judiciously gathered together here for the first time and annotated by the insightful young scholar Emily Bernard, Remember Me to Harlem shows us an unlikely friendship, one that is essential to our understanding of literature and race relations in twentieth-century America.
Format: Paperback, 218pp. An AALBC on-line reading group selection for February 2002 Jesse B. Simple, Simple to his fans, made weekly appearances beginning in 1943 in Langston Hughes's column in the Chicago Defender. This collection contains 62 of Hughes's magnificent Simple stories, many never before published in book form. "A lively collection . . . funny-but-wise."--Robert O'Meally, New York Newsday.
edited by David Roessel and Arnold Rampersad illustrated by Benny Andrews Reading level: Ages 9-12 Hardcover: 48 pages *Starred Review* Gr. 7-10. Hughes' stirring poetry continues to have enormous appeal for young people. In this illustrated collection of 26 poems, Andrews' beautiful collage-and-watercolor illustrations extend the rhythm, exuberance, and longing of the words--not with literal images, but with tall, angular figures that express a strong sense of African American music, dreams, and daily life--while leaving lots of space for the words to "sing America." The picture-book format makes Hughes' work accessible to some grade-school children, especially for reading aloud and sharing, but the main audience will be older readers, who can appreciate the insightful, detailed introduction and biography, as well as the brief notes accompanying each poem, contributed by Hughes scholars Roessel and Rampersol. Their comments, together with the quotes from the poet himself, will encourage readers to return to the book to see how Hughes made poetry of his personal life, black oral and musical traditions, urban experience, and the speech of ordinary people. Whether the focus is the Harlem Renaissance, the political struggle, Hughes' African heritage, or the weary blues, this book will find great use in many libraries. Hazel Rochman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Format: Hardcover, 1st ed., 72pp.
Format: Compact Disc - Abridged, 5 CDs The leading voices of African-American letters come together in this essential collection of poems, prose and theater performance. One of the most significant occurrences in America during the 20th century was the rise of African-American writers to the forefront of literature. Documenting their views on American culture and its tragic and glorious history, African-American writers' contributions reflected their struggle for equality and paved the way into a brighter future for their country. This collection includes selections of some of the best of those works, with an original introduction by Nikki Giovanni: Black Boy by Richard Wright. A classic of American autobiography, this subtly crafted narrative chronicles one man's coming of age in the Jim Crow South. Performed by Brock Peters. A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. An emotionally lacerating landmark of American theater, Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun is presented here with a full cast performance starring Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis. Excerpts from The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection. A collection of poems from one of the most commanding voices to grace America's political and poetic landscape. Read by the author. Excerpts from the "Tall Tales" Chapter of Every Tounge Got to Confess by Zora Neale Hurston. Collected in the 1920s, these stories pay tribute to the richness of Black vernacular and reflect -- with wit, wisdom, compassion, and style -- the sorrows and joys of the African-American heritage. Performed by Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis. Excerpts from Langston Hughes Reads. Arare and exceptional recording on one of the greatest American poets of the 20th century. Three poems by Gwendolyn Brooks. "We Real Cool," "Malcolm X," and "The Sermon on the Warpland." Performed by Ruby Dee.
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| Related Links Generations in Black & White: Photographs by
Carl Van Vechten from the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection
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The
Life of Langston Hughes, Volume 2: 1941-1967: I Dream a World
The Life of Langston Hughes, Volume 1: 1902-1941: I, Too,
Sing America, Vol. 1
The
Ways of White Folks 
The Return of Simple
Poetry for Young People:
black misery
The African American Audio Experience
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