Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"This is a book I have waited half a lifetime for."--Alice Walker. "Excellent....Mr. Rampersad [leaves] you eager to see what he makes of the rest of the story, and confident that his second volume will be as good as his first."--
The New York Times. "A sympathetic, yet clear-eyed portrait of one of America's most controversial writers that also manages to be a sweeping depiction of the black experience in this country and abroad during the first four decades of the 20th century....A near-perfect example of the biographer's art, balanced and thought-provoking."--
Kirkus Reviews. "The best biography of Hughes ever written, and in my opinion it is also the best biography of a black American writer ever written."--Arna A. Bontemps. "There can be no question about the importance of Rampersad's biography...without doubt the definitive Hughes biography."--James Olney
Review
"There can be no question about the importance of Rampersad's biography...without doubt the definitive Hughes biography."--James Olney, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge
"The best biography of Hughes ever written, and in my opinion it is also the best biography of a black American ever written."--Arna A. Bontemps, Hampton University
"Excellent....Mr. Rampersad [leaves] you eager to see what he makes of the rest of the story, and confident that his second volume will be as good as his first."--John Gross, The New York Times
"A near-perfect example of the biographer's art, balanced, and thought-provoking."--Kirkus Reviews
"This is a book I have waited half a lifetime for."--Alice Walker
"[An] exceptional biography."--Voice Literary Supplement
"Throughout this comprehensive and enthralling account of Hughes's life and his development as a writer, Rampersad offers a precise assessment of his work and its importance...This may be the best biography of a black writer we have had."--David Nicholson, The Washington Post Book World
"Absorbing....Readers can certainly applaud this beautifully-produced book and commend its scope."--American Literature
"An exquisite orchestration of the fully lived life."--Michael S. Harper, The Boston Globe
"A very fine first volume of a projected two-volume critical biography of Langston Hughes. Indeed, it is, by every measure, the best biography to date of a black literary figure....It is so well written that ordinary incidents and characters are well-meshed and, at times, almost seem to be creatively plotted....We eagerly await Rampersad's second volume of the Hughes biography. If it is as well-written and as authoritatively informative as this volume, the literary world will indeed be well served."--Resources for American Literary Study
Synopsis
Poet, playwright, novelist, a grand figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s--Langston Hughes was one of the most extraordinary and prolific American writers of this century. This book is the first installment of a projected two-volume life that will undoubtedly be the definitive biography of Hughes. Based on exhaustive research in archival collections throughout the country and abroad but primarily in the Langston Hughes Papers (previously closed to most scholars) at the Beinecke Library of Yale University, the book traces in detail Hughes's life from his birth in Missouri in 1902 to the winter of 1941. Descended from a family steeped in radical Abolitionism (an ancestor had fought and died with John Brown at Harper's Ferry), Hughes was a driven man who often gave the appearance of a happy wanderer. His nomadic life led him to Mexico in 1919 and 1920, Africa in 1923, Europe in 1924, and the Soviet Union in 1932. After his exhilarating Russian travels, he completed a journey around the world by way of China and Japan, and in 1937, he spent several months in besieged Madrid at the height of the Spanish Civil War. Hughes's greatest devotion, however, was to the word. Inspired by both the democratic chants of Walt Whitman and the vibrant forms of Afro-American culture, he became the most original and revered of black poets as well as a fiction writer and dramatist of considerable power. Although his political vision was often radical and his sense of injustice acute, he faced the world as an open, laughing, and gregarious man. Yet, as this compelling biography shows, there lurked beneath the laughter a gnawing loneliness that Hughes strove to overcome in his devotion to his art and his ideal vision of America.