Download or read book Letters from Langston written by Langston Hughes and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016-02-01 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Langston Hughes, one of America's greatest writers, was an innovator of jazz poetry and a leader of the Harlem Renaissance whose poems and plays resonate widely today. Accessible, personal, and inspirational, HughesÕs poems portray the African American community in struggle in the context of a turbulent modern United States and a rising black freedom movement. This indispensable volume of letters between Hughes and four leftist confidants sheds vivid light on his life and politics. Letters from Langston begins in 1930 and ends shortly before his death in 1967, providing a window into a unique, self-created world where Hughes lived at ease. This distinctive volume collects the stories of Hughes and his friends in an era of uncertainty and reveals their visions of an idealized worldÑone without hunger, war, racism, and class oppression.
Download or read book Remember Me to Harlem written by Langston Hughes and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Langston Hughes is widely remembered as a celebrated star of the Harlem Renaissance -- a writer whose bluesy, lyrical poems and novels still have broad appeal. What's less well known about Hughes is that for much of his life he maintained a friendship with Carl Van Vechten, a flamboyant white critic, writer, and photographer whose ardent support of black artists was peerless. Despite their differences — Van Vechten was forty-four to Hughes twenty-two when they met–Hughes’ and Van Vechten’s shared interest in black culture lead to a deeply-felt, if unconventional friendship that would span some forty years. Between them they knew everyone — from Zora Neale Hurston to Richard Wright, and their letters, lovingly and expertly collected here for the first time, are filled with gossip about the antics of the great and the forgotten, as well as with talk that ranged from race relations to blues lyrics to the nightspots of Harlem, which they both loved to prowl. It’s a correspondence that, as Emily Bernard notes in her introduction, provides “an unusual record of entertainment, politics, and culture as seen through the eyes of two fascinating and irreverent men.
Download or read book Arna Bontemps Langston Hughes Letters 1925 1967 written by Arna Bontemps and published by Paragon House Publishers. This book was released on 1990 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The work of Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes is a celebration of the triumphant creative spirit in African-American life. From the welding of their friendship in 1925 until Hughes's death in 1967, this volume gathers the best of the forty-two years of correspondence between them. The first letters, written in the midst of the Harlem Renaissance, witness the struggle of two young writers searching for a voice and an identity. By 1941, both Bontemps and Hughes had achieved a certain degree of success, and had become increasingly involved in racial and social struggles. Finally, in the period between 1959 and 1967, we see them react to the civil rights movement. This fascinating collection makes an invaluable contribution to the understanding of twentieth century American culture and one of its most vital components, the African-American heritage which these two correspondents did so much to create. --From book cover.
Download or read book Selected Letters of Langston Hughes written by Langston Hughes and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first comprehensive selection from the correspondence of the iconic and beloved Langston Hughes. It offers a life in letters that showcases his many struggles as well as his memorable achievements. Arranged by decade and linked by expert commentary, the volume guides us through Hughes’s journey in all its aspects: personal, political, practical, and—above all—literary. His letters range from those written to family members, notably his father (who opposed Langston’s literary ambitions), and to friends, fellow artists, critics, and readers who sought him out by mail. These figures include personalities such as Carl Van Vechten, Blanche Knopf, Zora Neale Hurston, Arna Bontemps, Vachel Lindsay, Ezra Pound, Richard Wright, Kurt Weill, Carl Sandburg, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Alice Walker, Amiri Baraka, and Muhammad Ali. The letters tell the story of a determined poet precociously finding his mature voice; struggling to realize his literary goals in an environment generally hostile to blacks; reaching out bravely to the young and challenging them to aspire beyond the bonds of segregation; using his artistic prestige to serve the disenfranchised and the cause of social justice; irrepressibly laughing at the world despite its quirks and humiliations. Venturing bravely on what he called the “big sea” of life, Hughes made his way forward always aware that his only hope of self-fulfillment and a sense of personal integrity lay in diligently pursuing his literary vocation. Hughes’s voice in these pages, enhanced by photographs and quotations from his poetry, allows us to know him intimately and gives us an unusually rich picture of this generous, visionary, gratifyingly good man who was also a genius of modern American letters.
Download or read book The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes written by James Langston Hughes and published by Knopf Publishing Group. This book was released on 1994 with total page 738 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here, for the first time, is a complete collection of Langston Hughes's poetry - 860 poems that sound the heartbeat of black life in America during five turbulent decades, from the 1920s through the 1960s.
Download or read book Zora Neale Hurston written by Carla Kaplan, Ph.D. and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 906 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “ I mean to live and die by my own mind,” Zora Neale Hurston told the writer Countee Cullen. Arriving in Harlem in 1925 with little more than a dollar to her name, Hurston rose to become one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance, only to die in obscurity. Not until the 1970s was she rediscovered by Alice Walker and other admirers. Although Hurston has entered the pantheon as one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century, the true nature of her personality has proven elusive. Now, a brilliant, complicated and utterly arresting woman emerges from this landmark book. Carla Kaplan, a noted Hurston scholar, has found hundreds of revealing, previously unpublished letters for this definitive collection; she also provides extensive and illuminating commentary on Hurston’s life and work, as well as an annotated glossary of the organizations and personalities that were important to it. From her enrollment at Baltimore’s Morgan Academy in 1917, to correspondence with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Langston Hughes, Dorothy West and Alain Locke, to a final query letter to her publishers in 1959, Hurston’s spirited correspondence offers an invaluable portrait of a remarkable, irrepressible talent.
Download or read book Langston Hughes and the Chicago Defender written by Langston Hughes and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2022-10-17 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Langston Hughes is well known as a poet, playwright, novelist, social activist, communist sympathizer, and brilliant member of the Harlem Renaissance. He has been referred to as the "Dean of Black Letters" and the "poet low-rate of Harlem." But it was as a columnist for the famous African-American newspaper the Chicago Defender that Hughes chronicled the hopes and despair of his people. For twenty years, he wrote forcefully about international race relations, Jim Crow, the South, white supremacy, imperialism and fascism, segregation in the armed forces, the Soviet Union and communism, and African-American art and culture. None of the racial hypocrisies of American life escaped his searing, ironic prose. This is the first collection of Hughes's nonfiction journalistic writings. For readers new to Hughes, it is an excellent introduction; for those familiar with him, it gives new insights into his poems and fiction.
Download or read book Finding Langston written by Lesa Cline-Ransome and published by Holiday House. This book was released on 2018-08-14 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book Winner of the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction When eleven-year-old Langston's father moves them from their home in Alabama to Chicago's Bronzeville district, it feels like he's giving up everything he loves. It's 1946. Langston's mother has just died, and now they're leaving the rest of his family and friends. He misses everything-- Grandma's Sunday suppers, the red dirt roads, and the magnolia trees his mother loved. In the city, they live in a small apartment surrounded by noise and chaos. It doesn't feel like a new start, or a better life. At home he's lonely, his father always busy at work; at school he's bullied for being a country boy. But Langston's new home has one fantastic thing. Unlike the whites-only library in Alabama, the Chicago Public Library welcomes everyone. There, hiding out after school, Langston discovers another Langston--a poet whom he learns inspired his mother enough to name her only son after him. Lesa Cline-Ransome, author of the Coretta Scott King Honor picture book Before She Was Harriet, has crafted a lyrical debut novel about one boy's experiences during the Great Migration. Includes an author's note about the historical context and her research. Don't miss the companion novel, Leaving Lymon, which centers on one of Langston's classmates and explores grief, resilience, and the circumstances that can drive a boy to become a bully-- and offer a chance at redemption. A Junior Library Guild selection! A CLA Notable Children's Book in Language Arts A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year, with 5 Starred Reviews A School Library Journal Best Book of 2018
Download or read book Letters to America written by Jim Daniels and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of poems that explore the issues surrounding race relations in American society, told from the experience of Black, Native American, Asian, Arabic, Hispanic, and white cultures.
Download or read book Zora and Langston A Story of Friendship and Betrayal written by Yuval Taylor and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Finalist for the 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Biography “A complete pleasure to read.” —Lisa Page, Washington Post Novelist Zora Neale Hurston and poet Langston Hughes, two of America’s greatest writers, first met in New York City in 1925. Drawn to each other, they helped launch a radical journal, Fire!! Later, meeting by accident in Alabama, they became close as they traveled together—Hurston interviewing African Americans for folk stories, Hughes getting his first taste of the deep South. By illuminating their lives, work, competitiveness, and ambitions, Yuval Taylor savvily details how their friendship and literary collaborations dead-ended in acrimonious accusations.
Download or read book Not Without Laughter written by Langston Hughes and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-03-05 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poet Langston Hughes' only novel, a coming-of-age tale that unfolds amid an African American family in rural Kansas, explores the dilemmas of life in a racially divided society.
Download or read book Selected Poems of Langston Hughes written by Langston Hughes and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1990-09-12 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Langston Hughes electrified readers and launched a renaissance in Black writing in America—the poems in this collection were chosen by Hughes himself shortly before his death and represent stunning work from his entire career. The poems Hughes wrote celebrated the experience of invisible men and women: of slaves who "rushed the boots of Washington"; of musicians on Lenox Avenue; of the poor and the lovesick; of losers in "the raffle of night." They conveyed that experience in a voice that blended the spoken with the sung, that turned poetic lines into the phrases of jazz and blues, and that ripped through the curtain separating high from popular culture. They spanned the range from the lyric to the polemic, ringing out "wonder and pain and terror—and the marrow of the bone of life." The collection includes "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," "The Weary Blues," "Still Here," "Song for a Dark Girl," "Montage of a Dream Deferred," and "Refugee in America." It gives us a poet of extraordinary range, directness, and stylistic virtuosity.
Download or read book That Is My Dream written by Langston Hughes and published by Anne Schwartz Books. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 19 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Dream Variation,” one of Langston Hughes's most celebrated poems, about the dream of a world free of discrimination and racial prejudice, is now a picture book stunningly illustrated by Daniel Miyares, the acclaimed creator of Float. To fling my arms wide In some place of the sun, To whirl and to dance Till the white day is done…. Langston Hughes's inspiring and timeless message of pride, joy, and the dream of a better life is brilliantly and beautifully interpreted in Daniel Miyares's gorgeous artwork. Follow one African-American boy through the course of his day as the harsh reality of segregation and racial prejudice comes into vivid focus. But the boy dreams of a different life—one full of freedom, hope, and wild possibility, where he can fling his arms wide in the face of the sun. Hughes's powerful vision, brought joyously to life by Daniel Miyares, is as relevant—and necessary—today as when it was first written.
Download or read book The Ways of White Folks written by Langston Hughes and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-09-07 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of vibrant and incisive short stories depicting the sometimes humorous, but more often tragic interactions between Black people and white people in America in the 1920s and ‘30s. One of the most important writers to emerge from the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes may be best known as a poet, but these stories showcase his talent as a lively storyteller. His work blends elements of blues and jazz, speech and song, into a triumphant and wholly original idiom. Stories included in this collection: "Cora Unashamed" "Slave on the Block" "Home" "Passing" "A Good Job Gone" "Rejuvenation Through Joy" "The Blues I'm Playing" "Red-Headed Baby" "Poor Little Black Fellow" "Little Dog" "Berry" "Mother and Child" "One Christmas Eve" "Father and Son"
Download or read book The Panther and the Lash written by Langston Hughes and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-10-26 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hughes's last collection of poems commemorates the experience of Black Americans in a voice that no reader could fail to hear—the last testament of a great American writer who grappled fearlessly and artfully with the most compelling issues of his time. “Langston Hughes is a titanic figure in 20th-century American literature ... a powerful interpreter of the American experience.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer From the publication of his first book in 1926, Langston Hughes was America's acknowledged poet of color. Here, Hughes's voice—sometimes ironic, sometimes bitter, always powerful—is more pointed than ever before, as he explicitly addresses the racial politics of the sixties in such pieces as "Prime," "Motto," "Dream Deferred," "Frederick Douglas: 1817-1895," "Still Here," "Birmingham Sunday." " History," "Slave," "Warning," and "Daybreak in Alabama."
Download or read book The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison written by Ralph Ellison and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2024-02-27 with total page 1073 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • A radiant collection of letters from the renowned author of Invisible Man that traces the life and mind of a giant of American literature, with insights into the riddle of identity, the writer’s craft, and the story of a changing nation over six decades These extensive and revealing letters span the life of Ralph Ellison and provide a remarkable window into the great writer’s life and work, his friendships, rivalries, anxieties, and all the questions about identity, art, and the American soul that bedeviled and inspired him until his death. They include early notes to his mother, written as an impoverished college student; lively exchanges with the most distinguished American writers and thinkers of his time, from Romare Bearden to Saul Bellow; and letters to friends and family from his hometown of Oklahoma City, whose influence would always be paramount. These letters are beautifully rendered first-person accounts of Ellison’s life and work and his observations of a changing world, showing his metamorphosis from a wide-eyed student into a towering public intellectual who confronted and articulated America’s complexities.
Download or read book Letters from Black America written by Pamela Newkirk and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2011-01-11 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first-ever narrative history of African Americans told through their own letters Letters from Black America fills a literary and historical void by presenting the spectrum of African American experience in the most intimate way possible—through the heartfelt correspondence of those who lived through monumental changes and pivotal events, from the American Revolution to the war in Iraq, from slavery to the election of Obama.
