Langston HughesBorn in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, the only child of James and Carrie Hughes, Langston Hughes survived a difficult and unhappy childhood to become one of the most important African-American writers of the twentieth century. At age nineteen, his first literary efforts were published in The Brownies' Book and The Crisis. He moved to New York in 1921 and quickly became one of the leading figures in the Harlem Renaissance, though he never settled permanently in Harlem but restlessly moved from place to place. His first important volume of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published in 1926. Although his first play, Mulatto, was a failure, later works established him as an important voice in the theater. Because he had spent time in the 1930s in the Soviet Union writing for Izvestia, he was investigated by the McCarthy Committee in the 1950s. Yet in the early 1960s, the U.S. State Department made him a cultural ambassador to Africa. Book jacket. |
Contents
In Grandmas Hands | 25 |
The Young Poet | 47 |
The Red Summer | 63 |
Harlem on My Mind | 79 |
The Mecca | 95 |
World Traveler | 111 |
College Bound | 127 |
Harlem in Vogue | 145 |
A Writers Life | 155 |
A Militant Past | 173 |
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