Reviews for The life of Langston Hughes

The average rating for The life of Langston Hughes based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-06-24 00:00:00 Alexander Drutsa Clearly the definitive biography of Hughes, it also stands as an adequate overview of his intersections with other African American literati in the first four decades of the twentieth century. It follows Hughes's earlier years of experimentation with poetical form as blues and jazz in rhythm and rhyme through his politicization in the 1930s, a time when Hughes felt he was too anodyne and wasn't saying enough about the plight of the African American in US society. He dabbled with socialism and communism and even made trips to the Soviet Union and Civil War Spain. He met and socialized with Nora Zeale Hurston and Richard Hughes and was a vibrant part of the Harlem Renaissance. Some parts of the biography are more fascinating than others, especially when Rampersad gets out of factual name checking and analyzes relationships and influences. His first patroness for instance was an absolute nutcase. Hughes himself is rather a blank slate personally, as his romantic life was obscured by lack of definitive personal records. Some have even speculated that he was homosexual, although Rampersad convinced me that he was rather asexual and reserved rather than a cad of any type. Sympathetic to a large degree, I look forward to reading the second volume to see how Hughes reacted to the civil rights movement.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-06-13 00:00:00 Cheryl Grue I learned that research can be used as a blessing and a way of connecting readers to life sustaining knowledge. Thank you Professor Rampersad for writing this book! Now I know what a great American Langston Hughes was and the amount of influence he had over other writers such as Alice Walker, Ralph Ellison, and Arna Botemps. Hughes was a world traveler and radical activist in addition to being a innovative writer of poems, plays, and fiction. I cannot wait to read Volume II.