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Books by Langston Hughes
Weary Blues (1926) /
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes
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The Ways of White Folks (Stories) /
The Big Sea: An Autobiography
Best of Simple /
I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey /
New Negro Poets U.S.A.
Not Without Laughter /Five Plays by Langston Hughes /
Selected Poems of Langston Hughes
Ask Your Mama: Twelve Moods for Jazz /
Fine Clothes to the Jew /
The Collected Works of Langston Hughes (Poems 1921-1940)
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Overview
“Hughes, perhaps
more than any other author, knows and loves the Negro
masses.”1 That is why Hughes, perhaps more
than any other writer, appeals to the masses of Negro
high school students. Both verse and stories are easy to
understand, but written with skill. Unlike many other
Negro authors, Hughes neither wrote about the dull,
cultured, intellectual elite, who are unpopular with
students, nor did he glory in gory lynchings and sex
perversions, which are unpopular with school boards. His
writings are about poor, ordinary people but with a
strong sense of humor. When asked what Negro writers
they like, students invariably list Hughes.
Langston Hughes is
difficult to classify as a writer. He was among the
leaders of the Negro Renaissance, but he continued to
write later than most others of this period. He wrote
poetry, short stories, novels, essays and edited many
collections of Negro writings.
Hughes had written
a number of short story collections, among them
Laughing to Keep from Crying (New York: Henry Holt
and Co., 1952, o. p.),
Something in Common and Other
Stories (New York: Hill & Wang, Inc., 1963), and
The Ways of White Folks (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc., 1934). Most of the stories are humorous, but one
always knows that much of the laughing is “to keep from
crying.” Topics vary from white tourists in Harlem to
brothels in Cuba to standard problems of getting a job
and family spats. Although many of the stories deal with
prostitutes and drinking and other forms of “low life,”
these are not treated in an objectionable manner.
more
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Scholarly Books on
Langston Hughes
Martha Cobb.
Harlem, Haiti, and Havana: A comparative critical study of
Langston Hughes, Jacques Roumain, Nicolás Guillén. 1979.
Faith Berry.
Before & Beyond Harlem: Biography of Langston Hughes.
1995.
Onwuchekwa Jemie
Langston Hughes: An Introduction to the
Poetry
(1985)
Edward J. Mullen.
Langston Hughes in the Hispanic World and Haiti (1971)
Arnold Rampersad.
The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume I: 1902-1941, I, Too,
Sing America (Life of Langston Hughes, 1902-1941). 2002
Arnold Rampersad.
The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume II: 1914-1967, I Dream a
World (Life of Langston Hughes, 1941-1967). 2002
Steven C. Tracy.
Langston Hughes and the Blues. 2001
R. Baxter Miller.
The Art And Imagination of Langston Hughes. 2006.
Jonathan Scott
Socialist Joy in the Writing of Langston Hughes.
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THE NEGRO
RENAISSANCE
The 1920’s
noisily brought in the Negro Renaissance—the
exciting period when outstanding black writers
suddenly began to appear and to assert the values of
Negro culture instead of middle-class society. It
was also a period when white writers became
intrigued with Negroes, and Harlem became the most
exciting part of New York.
Several factors
contributed to the blossoming of the Negro
Renaissance. By the 1920’s education for Negroes,
though still difficult, was not unusual, and a
fairly large middle class and a small intelligentsia
had developed. Harlem developed into a center for
Negro culture, where Negro writers and thinkers
could analyze their work together and share the
problems of writing.
By the 1920’s
the Negro writer was able to assume a more mature
attitude toward the white culture. He had attained
enough freedom to assert himself as an individual;
however, he had also experienced enough
discrimination to know the assimilation was not
possible for him, so he turned in the other
direction, toward self-assertion. Earlier Negro
writings had attacked the cruelties of the white
culture; the writers of the Renaissance revolted
against the culture itself. The Negro Renaissance
affirms that the white culture is weak, or at least
inferior to the black culture, and that the Negro
should refuse assimilation.
The white
culture encouraged this rejection, for this was the
time of the roaring 20’s, and the whites were
themselves rejecting their Victorian culture. Many
came to Harlem seeking a new culture.
Writing
flourished. The writers of this period were capable
craftsmen who could stand on their own merits in
competition with other American writers.
CLAUDE McKAY
(1891–1948)
Claude McKay was one
of the most outspoken of the Negro Renaissance
writers—openly embracing ideas generally considered
repugnant. He pointed out the weaknesses of the
white culture while predicting its downfall. He
gloried in both the virtues and what others may
consider the vices of the Negro and advocated revolt
against whites and their culture. Many of his ideas
are now being popularized by the Black Power
movement. . . .
JEAN TOOMER
(1894–1967)
"Cane is an important American novel. By far
the most impressive product of the Negro
Renaissance, it ranks with Richard Wright’s
Native Son and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man
as a measure of the Negro novelist’s highest
achievement. Jean Toomer belongs to that first rank
of writers who use words almost as a plastic medium
shaping new meanings from an original and highly
personal style. Since stylistic innovation requires
great technical dexterity, Toomer displays a concern
for technique which is fully two decades in advance
of the period. While his contemporaries of the
Harlem school were still experimenting with crude
literary realism, Toomer had progressed beyond the
naturalistic novel to the “higher realism of the
emotions” to symbol, and to myth" (Robert Bone,
The Negro Novel in America).
Cane
(New York: Boni and Liveright, 1923, o.p.; reissued
New York: University Place Book shop) is an unusual
book, a series of vignettes and poems about life
among Negroes in the South. It gives an impression
like a photograph album of a trip. Some of the
pictures, like the one of Robert, are only character
sketches; “Kabnis” is almost a novelette; many are
poems, and other selections vary in length.
Subjects, too, vary from the tender story of lovely
Fern who could not find love with anyone to the
story of Bessie, the outcast white woman with two
Negro children. Although the themes are often of
violence and oppression, the characters are built
with sympathy and understanding. The work is out of
print, and copies are quite rare, though several of
the poems are reprinted in most Negro poetry
collections. Jean Toomer did not fulfill the promise
of this remarkable work but instead disappeared from
the literary scene.
COUNTEE CULLEN
(1903–1946)
Countee Cullen
was one of the most significant writers of the Negro
Renaissance. More middle-class than McKay, he wrote
with pathos and understatement instead of violence
and passion. On These I Stand (New York:
Harper & Row, Publishers, 1947) is a selection of
his best poems. The poems from Color (o.p.)
deal with the Negro’s search for identity and the
meaning of race. “Yet Do I Marvel,” one of Cullen’s
most famous poems, asks how Gold could make a poet
black and bid him sing. “The Shroud of Color” is a
long poem that explores the meaning of color in a
kind of mystical vision. “Heritage” explores the
relationship of the Negro to this African heritage.
Two other poems with milder racial undertones that
should be useful with high school students are
“Saturday’s Child,” about a child born into poverty,
and “Tableau,” about a white boy and a Negro walking
together. . . .
ZORA NEALE HURSTON
(1903–1960)
[Zora
Neale Hurston, folklorist and writer, became a central
figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston was born and educated
in Eatonville, Florida, the first incorporated black city in the
United States. At the age of 16, she left her home to work with
a traveling theatrical company. The company ended up in New York
City , where Hurston studied anthropology at Columbia
University. She then attended Howard University as well as
Barnard College.]
Their Eyes Were
Watching God
(Philadelphia: J. B.
Lippincott Co., 1937, o. p.) is one of the most
significant Negro novels of the period. While it is
not a great book, it is a very good one. It has a
sensitivity in language that at times becomes
poetic. Theme and character are developed well. From
tender adolescent dreams, Janie was forced into a
respectable but loveless marriage. She soon ran off
with romance, but it too became respectable and she
found herself the mayor’s wife, but still not in
love. Finally, as a forty-year-old widow with a
fortune, she threw over her respectable position for
a young gambler who offered nothing but love.
Although her two years with Teacake brought terrible
suffering, Janie felt that she had found
fulfillment. . . .
NELLA
LARSEN
Nella Larsen
wrote sentimental women’s novels that are not quite
successful. Her novels seem to be trying too hard:
the characters are overdrawn, the conflicts are
exaggerated, and the plots are too shocking.
Passing (1929, o.p.) contrasts Irene, who had
stayed with her people and married a well-to-do
Negro, with Clare, a Negro who had married a wealthy
white man. Clare was unhappy and wanted to return to
Negro life but could not because of her husband and
daughter. She had an affair with Irene’s husband and
as a result Irene pushed her out of the window. . .
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ARNA BONTEMPS (1902–)
Arna Bontemps is
one of the most important figures in American Negro
literature, although he is probably better known for
his anthologies and Negro history collections than
for his own work.
Bontemps’ best
novel is
Black Thunder (New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1936, o. p.). It is a panoramic
view of a slave rebellion in Virginia. Gabriel, the
leader of the revolt, is the central character, but
the scene shifts through a number of minor
characters—both Negro and white—who are connected
with the plot. With this panoramic technique,
Bontemps successfully maintains suspense for a very
short plot.
Source:
Barbara Dodds •
Negro Literature for High School Students • ©
Copyright 1968 • National Council of Teacher of
English • Champaign, Illinois 61820
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Ralph Ellison on the Influence of
Existentialism
and Negro Renaissance
Now for the main
ideological and intellectual forces operating within the small
group in which I found myself: There was the psychological in
the form of Freudianism, the political in the form of Marxism,
and in Malraux’s fiction and criticism, which questioned the
assertions of both, there were the concepts of existentialism.
With these there was the living presence of Langston Hughes,
Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Sterling Brown and Alain Locke.
Now I don’t mean that these figures were “influences” in any
simple-minded way, but that their examples were part of the
glamour of Harlem and thus important to your sense of
opportunity.
And, although you had a
vague but different set of tunes tinkling in your head and
sought other solutions and perhaps a more complex form in which
to work, you respected them and their achievements. You
respected them even after you discovered that some of them like,
say, McKay, were inarticulate when it came to discussing
technique. In fact, Wright was far more articulate in that area
than either Hughes or McKay.
But, there was another factor which I found most important. The
writers I’ve just mentioned related to Harlem and to the waning
influence of the Negro Renaissance, but there was a wider world
of culture to be found in New York, and I made my closest
contacts with it on the Writers Project. There you were thrown
in contact not only with black and white writers of your own age
grouping, but with a number who had already achieved broad
reputations. McKay was one of these, but most were white.
Source:
The Essential Ellison
(Interview)—Ishmael Reed, Quincy Troupe, Steve Cannon. Ishmael
Reed’s and Al Young’s Y’Bird • Copyright © 1977, 1978 Y’Bird
Magazine
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Leonard Harris
and Charles Molesworth.
Alain L. Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher
(2008)--Alain
L. Locke (1886-1954), in his famous 1925 anthology
The New Negro, declared that “the pulse of the
Negro world has begun to beat in Harlem.” Often called
the father of the Harlem Renaissance, Locke had his
finger directly on that pulse, promoting, influencing,
and sparring with such figures as
Langston Hughes,
Zora Neale Hurston,
Jacob Lawrence, Richmond Barthé, William Grant Still,
Booker T.
Washington, W. E. B. Du
Bois, Ralph Bunche, and John Dewey. The long-awaited
first biography of this extraordinarily gifted
philosopher and writer, Alain L. Locke narrates the
untold story of his profound impact on twentieth-century
America’s cultural and intellectual life. Leonard Harris
and Charles Molesworth trace this story through Locke’s
Philadelphia upbringing, his undergraduate years at
Harvard—where William James helped spark his influential
engagement with pragmatism—and his tenure as the first
African American Rhodes Scholar. The heart of their
narrative illuminates Locke’s heady years in 1920s New
York City and his forty-year career at Howard
University, where he helped spearhead the adult
education movement of the 1930s and wrote on topics
ranging from the philosophy of value to the theory of
democracy. |
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posted 1 May 2009 |
