The Life of Langston Hughes

by Arnold Rampersad

Book Overview

The first volume of Arnold Rampersad's The Life of Langston Hughes was published in 1986 to enormous acclaim. It was hailed as "an exquisite orchestration of the fully lived life" (The Boston Globe), "comprehensive and enthralling" (The Washington Post Book World), and "a book I have waited half a lifetime for" (Alice Walker). It won the Anisfield-Wolf Award in Race Relations and was named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times Book...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 019504519X
• ISBN13: 9780195045192
• Release Date: October 1988
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 528 Pages
• Weight: 2.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

One of the Most Creative Minds to Grace the planet

Langston Hughes was a Poets Poet.he had words that were uplifting that took you to another time & Place.Arnold Rampersad does a great job of telling the story of Langston Hughes & showcasing the Greatness of His Writings.Langston Hughes was ahead of time & Very Gifted African-American Writer.He left behind Ground-Breaking work that still speaks volumes to this day.

Forever A Proud & Unblemished Icon!

Arnold Rampersad's LIFE OF LANGSTON HUGHES Volume 2 retains much of Hughes' evident black pride that is inescapable no matter the type of biography and critical analysis done on him and his body of work. Hughes wrote about many other things during his lifetime, but he mostly celebrated his African American culture without shame or apology. Volume 2 picks up where the first left off. Langston Hughes is at the crossroads of a lived life. His career as a writer has stalled a bit, he has becomes disillusioned by the predominantely white left who rufuses to understand fully and acknowledge the plight of the black American, and he is ill. Eventually, his career begins to get back on track and Rampersad takes the reader along with Hughes through the rest of his life to his death in 1967. Langston reaches out to the rest of the world through his love for his fellow black Americans and their stories and concerns. He faces the McCarthy hearings successfully but with a slight change from the politcal rhetoric expressed so openly in the 1930's where he had merged racial pride with a radical socialism to insure that the left could not exclude blacks from the agenda. He witnesses the rise of a new generation of black writers, some who pleased him and others who did not, some who loved and respected him and others who did not. He challeged them to be proud of their black American heritage in their writing but also to be objective in their evaluations. He felt the sting of some of these young black writers who felt that he was out of touch and not angry enough. And, he witnessed the return of appreciation from the outside world for his body of work and humanity. Despite a general dislike he held for white people, some wasn't as liked by him as they believed themselves to be, it never materialized into open hate as it did with many in the Black Power Movement. Rampersad provides the best example of this by recounting a moment of outright rage in Hughes where he raises his voice to express his frustration and anger toward white folks, "benevolent anger" as opposed to the "malignant anger" of many in the Black Power Movement. Hughe fully understood the error of blanketing all white people as the same in prejudice. Arnold Rampersad depth of exhaustive research is evident in the facts he uncovers in Hughes's complicated character. And, some readers will be surprised by what they will read such as his understanding of the short comings of integration where African Americans would to a large degree abandon their own infrastructure instead of building on it to be more secure without self-segregation and imposed segregation from the outside. Rampersad presents Hughes as the human being with foibles and not just a mythic icon of African American and American literature in general. Perhaps willingly to some degree to keep money in the bank as he "sharecropped" his way through his long career, the reader will definitely come away with the knowledged that

A timeless piecework of art

This book has 425 pages in. It is wonderful and full of energy. It starts with one of Hughes poems and leads you down the ailes. The book is interesting, to the point and gives you enough information to find out more about how great Hughes is. I loved reading it and it gives you so much information to help you fully get to know Mr. Hughes. It is long but worth reading every page of it. I highly recommend reading this book.