The Short Stories of Langston Hughes - (Paperback)

About the Book

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.

Book Synopsis

The Short Stories of Langston Hughes

This collection of forty-seven stories written between 1919 and 1963--the most comprehensive available--showcases Langston Hughes's literary blossoming and the development of his personal and artistic concerns. Many of the stories assembled here have long been out of print, and others never before collected. These poignant, witty, angry, and deeply poetic stories demonstrate Hughes's uncanny gift for elucidating the most vexing questions of American race relations and human nature in general.

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

About the Author

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.

Akiba Sullivan Harper is a professor of English at Spelman College and the editor of The Return of Simple.

Arnold Rampersad, Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature at Princeton University, is the author of The Life of Langston Hughes and editor of The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes.