LANGSTON HUGHES
The Poet Laureate of Harlem
Poet, Essayist, Novelist, Playwright, Journalist and Lyricist
(February 1, 1902 - May 22, 1967)
-Bio from liner cover, Black
Misery, Oxford University Press
-Photo Official U.S. Stamp issued in January 2002 to commemorate Hughes'
100th birthday
Langston Hughes - Mini Bio (© 2012 A+E Television Networks, LLC. All Rights Reserved)
I, Too, Am America
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by Langston Hughes (Author), Bryan Collier (Illustrator)
Reading level: Ages 4 and up
Hardcover: 40 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers; First Edition edition
(May 22, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1442420081
ISBN-13: 978-1442420083
Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 9.4 x 0.4 inches
Winner of the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award
I, Too, Am America blends the poetic wisdom of Langston Hughes with visionary illustrations from Bryan Collier in this inspirational picture book that carries the promise of equality.
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Langston Hughes was a courageous voice
of his time, and his authentic call for equality still rings true today.
Beautiful paintings from Barack Obama illustrator Bryan Collier accompany
and reinvent the celebrated lines of the poem "I, Too," creating a
breathtaking reminder to all Americans that we are united despite our
differences.
This picture book of Langston Hughes’s celebrated poem, "I, Too, Am
America," is also a Common Core Text Exemplar for Poetry.
My
People
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by
Langston Hughes (Author),
Charles R. Smith Jr. (Illustrator)
Reading level: Ages 4-8
Hardcover: 40 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing/Atheneum (January 6, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1416935401
ISBN-13: 978-1416935407
Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 9.1 x 0.6 inches
Winner 2010 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award
Langston Hughes's spare yet eloquent tribue to his people has been cherished for generations. Now, acclaimed photographer Charles R. Smith Jr. interprets this beloved poem in vivid sepia photographs that capture the glory, the beauty, and the soul of being a black American today.
The
Negro Speaks of Rivers
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by
Langston Hughes (Author),
E. B. Lewis
(Illustrator)
Reading level: Ages 4-8
Hardcover: 32 pages
Publisher: Hyperion Book CH (January 6, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0786818670
ISBN-13: 978-0786818679
Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 11.3 x 0.4 inches
Winner 2010 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Award
Langston Hughes has long been acknowledged as the voice,
and his poem, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, the song, of the
Harlem Renaissance.
Although he was only seventeen when he composed it, Hughes already had the
insight to capture in words the strength and courage of black people in
America.
Artist E.B. Lewis acts as interpreter and visionary, using watercolor to pay
tribute to Hughes's timeless poem, a poem that every child deserves to know.
The
Life of Langston Hughes, Volume 2: 1941-1967: I Dream a World
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Amazon
ISBN: 0195146433
Format: Paperback, 576pp
Pub. Date: January 2002
Publisher: Oxford University Press
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.
The Life of Langston Hughes, Volume 1: 1902-1941: I, Too,
Sing America, Vol. 1
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ISBN: 0195146425
Format: Paperback, 528pp
Pub. Date: February 2001
Publisher: Oxford University Press
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.
Rampersad recounts Hughes' early days in Kansas as a child of a family
steeped in radical Abolitionism, with an ancestor who fought and died at
Harper's Ferry in John Brown's band. Taught by his aged grandmother to
revere freedom and justice, he nevertheless led a lonely life as a child.
His mother left him in his grandmother's care while trying unsuccessfully to
launch a career in the theater, and his father--a black man who seemed to
hate blacks--abandoned him to find a business career in Mexico. Hughes grew
into a highly disciplined and yet restless adult who found personal
salvation in poetry.
Inspired by both the democratic chants of Walt Whitman and the vibrant forms
of Afro-American culture, Hughes became the most original and revered of
black poets. Rampersad's study traces the nomadic, yet dedicated spirit that
led him--as a young man--to Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Africa, Europe, the Soviet
Union, China, and Japan, as well as all over the United States. During his
travels, Hughes cultivated associations with a dazzling range of political
activists, patrons, and fellow artists, including Paul Robeson,
Zora Neale
Hurston, Carl Van Vechten, Lincoln Steffens, Nancy Cunard, Ernest Hemingway,
and Claude McKay.
Based on exhaustive research in archival collections throughout the country,
especially in the Langston Hughes papers at Yale University's Beinecke
Library, Rampersad's masterful work presents a vivid portrait of one of our
greatest writers and a sweeping panorama of culture and history in the early
twentieth century.
The
Ways of White Folks
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Format: Paperback, 1st ed., 256pp.
ISBN: 0679728171
Publisher: Vintage Books
Pub. Date: September 1990
From Sacred
Fire
If you are not yet familiar with Langston Hughes, then his collection The
Ways of White Folks (named in homage to Du Bois's classic The Souls
of Black Folk) is the perfect introduction to his mordant wit and
unerring eye for detail and his sly and direct prose.
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.
Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, 1925-1964
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ISBN: 0679451137
Publisher: Knopf Alfred A
Pub. Date: February 2001
Edition Desc: 1 ED
These engaging and wonderfully alive letters paint an intimate portrait of
two of the most important and influential figures of the Harlem
Renaissance. Carl Van Vechten—older, established, and white—was at
first a mentor to the younger, gifted, and black Langston Hughes. But the
relationship quickly grew into a great friendship—and for nearly four
decades the two men wrote to each other expressively and constantly.
The Return of Simple
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ISBN: 080901582X
Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Incorporated
Pub. Date: July 1995
Poetry for Young People:
Langston
Hughes
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edited by David Roessel and Arnold Rampersad illustrated by Benny Andrews
Reading level: Ages 9-12
Hardcover: 48 pages
Publisher: Sterling (April 28, 2006)
ISBN-10: 1402718454
ISBN-13: 978-1402718458
Product Dimensions: 10 x 8.8 x 0.5 inches
*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. Related Links Generations in Black & White: Photographs by
Carl Van Vechten from the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection 
black misery
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ISBN: 0195091140
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Pub. Date: April 1994
"Black Misery was the last book that Langston Hughes wrote. He died in May
1967, while working on the manuscript."
Read an
AALBC.com review of
black misery
The African American Audio Experience
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ISBN: 006053527X
Pub. Date: January 2003
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
http://aalbc.com/books/generati.htm
