Description: Langston Hughes was a prolific writer: the author of plays, poetry, novels, autobiography, and children's tales. But it is in his short stories that readers see most clearly his greatest talents--his gift for humor and irony, his love for the vernacular, his brilliance in depicting character, and his profound perceptions about America. This new collection of 47 stories, written between 1919 and 1963, follows Hughes's literary blossoming and the development of his political and personal concerns.
Brief description: Langston Hughes (1902-67) was born in Joplin, Missouri, was educated at Lincoln University, and lived for most of his life in New York City. He is best known as a poet, but he also wrote novels, biography, history, plays, and children's books. Among his works are two volumes of memoirs, The Big Sea and I Wonder as I Wander, and two collections of Simple stories, The Best of Simple and The Return of Simple.
Review Quotes:
"Perhaps more than any other writer in American history, Hughes was able to capture 'the Harlemness of the American predicament' (to quote Ralph Ellison's wonderful phrase), in words that had the ring of truth not just in literary circles but in barbershops and beauty parlors of everyday Harlem itself." --Robert G. O'Meally, New York Newsday
"[Hughes's] fiction...manifests his 'wonder at the world.' As these stories reveal, that wonder has lost little of its shine." --Brooke Horvath, The Cleveland Plain Dealer "A good example of how Hughes attempted the balancing act of writing an engaged literary and genuinely popular literature that spoke for and of the everyday lives of African-Americans." --James Smethurst, Chicago Tribune