by
Hughes, Langston, 1902-1967.
Call Number
818.5209 22
Publication Date
2003
Summary
I Wonder As I Wander (1956), Hughes's second volume of autobiography, is a continuation from The Big Sea, detailing his global travels to such areas as Cuba, Haiti, Paris, the Soviet Union, and the Far East. It culminates in his 1937 coverage for the Baltimore Afro-American of the Spanish Civil War. The travelogue highlights the beginning of Hughes's career as a journalist, a further realization of his goal to live as a professional writer. Furthermore, it shows the influence of legendary black educator Mary McLeod Bethune, who inspired Hughes to travel through the South giving readings of his poetry. His recollections of American journeys place him as well in Carmel, California, and the San Francisco area, where he was befriended by Noël Sullivan and was among the set of Hollywood personalities sometimes including James Cagney, Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, as well as Indian mystic J. Krishnamurti. Hughes also shows readers the lighter side of his adventures in the Caribbean, where he experienced the rhythms of Afro-Cuban music and the wonders of such sights as the Citadel in Haiti. In 1932, having traveled with a group of African Americans to the Soviet Union to make a film about southern black steelworkers and domestic laborers, Hughes became familiar not only with Moscow's theatrical life but also with "colored" minorities in the new republics of Soviet Central Asia. As a wanderer, he carried with him a record player and a collection of jazz recordings and became an informal participant in "cultural exchange." For Hughes, the lack of appreciation of jazz by Russian ideologues was a major flaw in the system. In Tokyo and Shanghai, he learned about Asian global politics and tough street life, and in Paris he reacquainted himself with its nightlife and such personalities as Ada "Bricktop" Smith and Josephine Baker. Throughout his journey, he observed the presence of blacks, whether as entertainers in major capitals or as soldiers on the battlefront in Barcelona and Madrid. His coverage of the Spanish Civil War is a serious report of the tragedy of conscripted North African Moors and the heroic efforts of the International Brigades and such African Americans as Milton Herndon in their fight against fascism. Spain is also a window into flamenco musical culture, where singers such as Pastora Pavón offer their own form of the blues. In rare moments, Hughes reveals aspects of his personal romantic encounters. Also of great interest are his recollections of writers Arthur Koestler, Nicolás Guillén, Pablo Neruda, and Ernest Hemingway. I Wonder As I Wander shows how Hughes maintained a Harlem-derived black consciousness, while expanding it through global wandering.
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by
Hughes, Langston, 1902-1967.
Call Number
973.0496073 22
Publication Date
2001
Summary
Nearing the end of a distinguished literary career that spanned nearly fifty years, Langston Hughes took on the daunting task of writing the official history of the national Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Beginning with the social, political, and economic contexts that led to the founding of the NAACP in 1909 and ending with a summary of its targeted goals for 1963, Hughes attempted to write a history that would be comprehensive in scope and singular in its purpose of highlighting the ways in which the Association had a direct and positive influence on racial justice in the United States. Focusing on the individuals who had the greatest impact on the NAACP and the issues with which the organization was most concerned in its first fifty years of existence, Hughes produced the widely acclaimed Fight for Freedom, striking an exceptional balance between biography and cultural history. Long before the publication of Fight for Freedom, Hughes had begun writing nonfictional prose about these same issues as a regular columnist and essayist for the nation's most influential African American publications, including the Chicago Defender and Crisis. A selection of these popular columns and other essays & mdash;which reveal the extent to which Hughes's unique, varied, and sometimes Blues- tinged narrative voice shifted in tone over the course of his extensive career & mdash;is included in this volume. Hughes intersperses historical facts with compelling anecdotes that often frame subtly ironic commentaries on various themes. The result is history that provides a lens through which to view Hughes's attitudes in the early 1960s toward the ways the NAACP addressed the vital social, cultural, political, and economic issues central to its agenda. Fight for Freedom and Other Writings on Civil Rights makes a unique contribution to the oeuvre of an African American writer whose full significance to American literature, history, and culture will continue to be defined well into the twenty-first century.
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by
Hughes, Langston, 1902-1967.
Call Number
812.52 21
Publication Date
2000
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