Bøger af Langston Hughes

From Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, a stunning collection of early works written from 1921-1927 and curated by award winning poet and National Book Award finalist, Danez Smith

Winner of the Coretta Scott King illustrator award, I, Too, Am America blends the poetic wisdom of Langston Hughes with visionary illustrations from Bryan Collier in this inspirational picture book that carries the promise of equality.I, too, sing America.I am the darker brother.They send me to eat in the kitchenWhen company comes,But I laugh,And eat well,And grow strong. Langston Hughes was a courageous voice of his time, and his authentic call for equality still rings true today. Beautiful paintings from Barack Obama illustrator Bryan Collier accompany and reinvent the celebrated lines of the poem "I, Too," creating a breathtaking reminder to all Americans that we are united despite our differences. This picture book of Langston Hughes’s celebrated poem, "I, Too, Am America," is also a Common Core Text Exemplar for Poetry.

Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life is a 1930 play by American authors Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. The process of writing the play led Hughes and Hurston, who had been close friends, to sever their relationship. Mule Bone was not staged until 1991. The play begins in Eatonville, Florida, on a Saturday afternoon with Jim and Dave fighting for Daisy's affection. The two men come to blows, and Jim picks up a hock bone from a mule and knocks Dave out. Jim is arrested and held for trial in Joe Clarke's barn. On Monday, the trial begins in the Macedonia Baptist Church. The townspeople are divided along religious lines: Jim's Methodist supporters sit on one side of the church, Dave's Baptist supporters on the other. The issue to be decided at the trial is whether or not Jim has committed a crime. Jim admits he hit Dave but denies it was a crime. Elder Simms argues on Jim's behalf that a weapon is necessary to commit a crime, and nowhere in the Bible does it say a mule bone is a weapon. Elder Childers, representing Dave, says Samson used a donkey's jawbone to kill 3,000 men (citing Judges 18:18), [2] so the hock bone of a mule must be even more powerful. Joe Clarke declares Jim guilty and banishes him from town for two years. Hughes and Hurston began writing Mule Bone in March 1930. They wanted to write a comedy about African-American life that didn't consist of racial stereotypes. They decided to base the plot on a folktale Hurston had collected in Florida during one of her anthropological field trips. The two writers dictated their work to Louise Thompson, who typed it. Their work was almost completed in June, when Hurston went away for the summer. She took her notes and said she would return in the fall, and they could finish the play. When Hurston came back, she would not return telephone calls from Hughes. She felt he wanted Thompson to be considered a third collaborator in the project, a proposal to which she strongly objected.[7][8] Concurrently, Hughes was in the process of severing his relationship with their common literary patron, Mrs. Rufus Osgood Mason. Reviewers have conjectured that Hurston may have been trying to protect her own relationship with Mason by shunning Hughes. Hurston submitted Mule Bone for copyright in October 1930, listing herself as the only author. In January 1931, Hughes found that a copy of Mule Bone had been sent to the Gilpin Players, an all-black theatre company in Cleveland, for their consideration-bearing only Hurston's name. Hurston told Hughes she hadn't sent them the play, an assertion that was true, but Hughes was furious. He sent a copy for copyright under both their names. In the meantime, the Gilpin Players wanted to stage the play. The play was still somewhat rough, but Hughes was in Cleveland, and he offered to help rewrite portions of the play. Hurston sent a telegram advising that she refused to allow the production. A day later, she sent another telegram authorizing the production on the condition that she be allowed to work with Hughes on changes. That same day, Hughes received a letter from Hurston saying that no part of the play had been written by him. In light of all the off-stage drama, the Gilpin Players decided not to proceed with their production. The copy of Mule Bone in the Langston Hughes papers at Yale University has a hand-written notation by Hughes: "This play was never done because the authors fell out.

"An illustrated picture book of Langston Hughes's classic 1926 poem about a Black boy listening to a relative's shadow-crossed stories of slavery, [which] honors a culture's history keepers"--

This is a new release of the original 1943 edition.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life is a 1930 play by American authors Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. The process of writing the play led Hughes and Hurston, who had been close friends, to sever their relationship. Mule Bone was not staged until 1991, when it was produced in New York City by the Lincoln Center Theater. The play begins in Eatonville, Florida, on a Saturday afternoon with Jim and Dave fighting for Daisy's affection. The two men come to blows, and Jim picks up a hock bone from a mule and knocks Dave out. Jim is arrested and held for trial in Joe Clarke's barn.On Monday, the trial begins in the Macedonia Baptist Church. The townspeople are divided along religious lines: Jim's Methodist supporters sit on one side of the church, Dave's Baptist supporters on the other. The issue to be decided at the trial is whether or not Jim has committed a crime. Jim admits he hit Dave but denies it was a crime. Elder Simms argues on Jim's behalf that a weapon is necessary to commit a crime, and nowhere in the Bible does it say a mule bone is a weapon. Elder Childers, representing Dave, says Samson used a donkey's jawbone to kill 3,000 men (citing Judges 18:18), so the hock bone of a mule must be even more powerful. Joe Clarke declares Jim guilty and banishes him from town for two years.Act III takes place some time later, with Daisy encountering Jim outside of town. She tells him she's been worried about him, but he's skeptical. She demonstrates the sincerity of her affection and Dave comes upon the couple. The two men engage in a war of words to try to show which of them loves Daisy more. The contest ends when it becomes clear that Daisy expects her man to work for the white people who employ her. Jim and Dave are reconciled, and neither remains interested in courting Daisy. The two men return to Eatonville. Mule Bone was produced for the first time in 1991 by the Lincoln Center Theater, more than 60 years after it was written. It opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway on February 14, 1991, to generally negative reviews.Reviewing Mule Bone for The New York Times, Frank Rich wrote that it was "an evening that can most kindly be described as innocuous". He described it as a "broad, often bland quasi-musical". Also writing in The New York Times, David Richards said of Mule Bone: "it's just not a very good play." Both critics suggested the play might have been much better had Hughes and Hurston finished their collaboration.The production closed on April 14, 1991, after 68 performances. (wikipedia.org)

"The Weary Blues" is the powerful and ground-breaking collection of poetry by American author Langston Hughes. An important contribution to the growing Harlem Renaissance art movement, "The Weary Blues" was Hughes' first poetry collection and was published in 1926 when the author was only 24, though some of the poems had appeared earlier in magazines. An immediate critical success, Hughes created a new form of poetry, called jazz or blues poetry, with his evocative and lyrical descriptions of the sounds and sights of a blues musician playing live. Hughes addresses the pressing social issues of racism, inequality, and political oppression while also capturing and celebrating the beauty and uniqueness of the African-American community in Harlem. In addition to the titular poem, "The Weary Blues" includes enduring classics of American poetry such as "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and Hughes' inspiring call for equality that begins "I, too, sing America". These poems, as well as the shorter and more exuberant works, remain as relevant and powerful as when they were first written. This deeply personal, sensitive, and often melancholy collection established Hughes as one of the most important writers of the twentieth-century and continues to be celebrated and enjoyed by readers the world over. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

First published in 1930, "Not Without Laughter" is the debut novel by Langston Hughes and a deeply personal, semi-autobiographical tale of an African-American family in rural Kansas. Langston Hughes, born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, spent much of his youth in Lawrence, Kansas and it is here that he set his first novel. "Not Without Laughter" tells the story of young Sandy Rogers as he grows from a boy to a young man and focuses on his "awakening to the sad and beautiful realities of black life in a small Kansas town". Sandy clashes with his irresponsible father, Jimboy, and relies on the hard work of his mother Annjelica and his tough grandmother, Aunt Hager, to survive the challenges of poverty and race in early-twentieth century rural America. Sandy's struggles mirror that of Hughes, who also had a strained and difficult relationship with his often absent father and was mainly raised by his maternal grandmother, a proud and strong woman who installed in Hughes a deep pride in his African-American heritage. "Not Without Laughter" is a powerful and moving portrait of race and poverty in America, as well as an important and inspiring story of hope and perseverance. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

A celebration of mermaids, wildernesses of waves, and the creatures of the deep through poems by Langston Hughes and cut-paper collage illustrations by Ashley Bryan.

Nearly ninety years after its first publication, this celebratory edition of The Weary Blues reminds us of the stunning achievement of Langston Hughes, who was just twenty-four at its first appearance. Beginning with the opening "Proem" (prologue poem)-"I am a Negro: / Black as the night is black, / Black like the depths of my Africa"-Hughes spoke directly, intimately, and powerfully of the experiences of African Americans at a time when their voices were newly being heard in our literature. As the legendary Carl Van Vechten wrote in a brief introduction to the original 1926 edition, "His cabaret songs throb with the true jazz rhythm; his sea-pieces ache with a calm, melancholy lyricism; he cries bitterly from the heart of his race . . . Always, however, his stanzas are subjective, personal," and, he concludes, they are the expression of "an essentially sensitive and subtly illusive nature." That illusive nature darts among these early lines and begins to reveal itself, with precocious confidence and clarity. In a new introduction to the work, the poet and editor Kevin Young suggests that Hughes from this very first moment is "celebrating, critiquing, and completing the American dream," and that he manages to take Walt Whitman's American "I" and write himself into it. We find here not only such classics as "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and the great twentieth-century anthem that begins "I, too, sing America," but also the poet's shorter lyrics and fancies, which dream just as deeply. "Bring me all of your / Heart melodies," the young Hughes offers, "That I may wrap them / In a blue cloud-cloth / Away from the too-rough fingers / Of the world."

2022 Reprint of the 1926 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. With an introduction by Carl Van Vechten. The Weary Blues is Langston Hughes's first published collection of poems, immediately celebrated as a tour de force upon its release. First published in 1926, the collection of poetry remains a critically acclaimed literary work and still evokes a fresh, contemporary feeling and offers a powerful reflection of the Black experience in Harlem in the 1920s. From the title poem "The Weary Blues," echoing the sounds of the blues, to "Dream Variation," ringing with joyfulness, to the "Epilogue" that mimics Walt Whitman in its opening line, "I, too, sing America," Hughes writes clearly and colorfully, and his words remain prophetic and relevant today. Langston Hughes was only twenty-four when he published this collection of poems. The poems included here blend vernacular speech and musical rhythms to offer a bracing perspective on the African American experience. Traversing a wide range of settings-including the jazz clubs of Harlem, expansive natural landscapes, and seaside taverns-Hughes's voice as a poet ties these various places together. The collection's themes are equally wide-ranging: Hughes explores the depth of the soul in "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," the pain of endurance in "Mother to Son," and death in the title poem's haunting requiem for a weary blues singer. Taken together, these poems offer a singular expression of joy, pride, and anguish from one of the leading voices of the Harlem Renaissance.Contents: Introducing Langston Hughes to the Reader / Carl Van Vechten -- Proem -- pt. I. The Weary Blues -- The Weary Blues -- Jazzonia -- Negro Dancers -- The Cat and the Saxophone -- Young Singer -- Cabaret -- To Midnight Nan at Leroy's -- To A little Lover-Lass, dead -- Harlem Night Club -- Nude Young Dancer -- Young Prostitute -- To a Black Dancer -- Song for a Banjo Dance -- Blues Fantasy -- Lenox Avenue : Midnight -- pt. II. Dream Variations -- Dream Variation -- Winter Moon -- Poeme d'Automne -- Fantasy in Purple -- March Moon -- Joy -- pt. III. The Negro Speaks of Rivers -- The Negro Speaks of Rivers -- Cross -- The Jester -- The South -- As I Grew Older -- Aunt Sue's Stories -- Poem -- pt. IV. Black Pierrot -- A Black Pierrot -- Harlem Night Song -- Songs to the Dark Virgin -- Ardella -- Poem-To the Black Beloved -- When Sue Wears Red -- Pierrot -- pt. V. Water-Front Streets -- Water-Front Streets -- A farewell -- Long Trip -- Port Town -- Sea Calm -- Caribbean Sunset -- Young Sailor -- Seascape -- Natcha -- Sea Charm -- Death of an Old Seaman -- pt. VI. Shadows in the Sun -- Beggar Boy -- Troubled Woman -- Suicide's Note -- Sick Room -- Soledad -- To the Dark Mercedes -- Mexican Market Woman -- After Many Springs -- Young Bride -- The dream Keeper -- Poem (To F.S.) -- pt. VII. Our Land --Our Land -- Lament for Dark Peoples -- Afraid -- Poem-For the Portrait of an African Boy -- Summer Night -- Disillusion -- Danse Africaine -- The White Ones -- Mother to Son -- Poem -- Epilogue.

Langston Hughes is widely remembered as a celebrated star of the Harlem Renaissance -- a writer whose bluesy, lyrical poems and novels still have broad appeal. What's less well known about Hughes is that for much of his life he maintained a friendship with Carl Van Vechten, a flamboyant white critic, writer, and photographer whose ardent support of black artists was peerless.Despite their differences — Van Vechten was forty-four to Hughes twenty-two when they met-Hughes' and Van Vechten's shared interest in black culture lead to a deeply-felt, if unconventional friendship that would span some forty years. Between them they knew everyone — from Zora Neale Hurston to Richard Wright, and their letters, lovingly and expertly collected here for the first time, are filled with gossip about the antics of the great and the forgotten, as well as with talk that ranged from race relations to blues lyrics to the nightspots of Harlem, which they both loved to prowl. It's a correspondence that, as Emily Bernard notes in her introduction, provides "an unusual record of entertainment, politics, and culture as seen through the eyes of two fascinating and irreverent men.

Langston Hughes's most beloved character comes back to life in this extraordinary collectionLangston Hughes is best known as a poet, but he was also a prolific writer of theater, autobiography, and fiction. None of his creations won the hearts and minds of his readers as did Jesse B. Semple, better known as "Simple." Simple speaks as an Everyman for African Americans in Uncle Sam's America. With great wit, he expounds on topics as varied as women, Gospel music, and sports heroes--but always keeps one foot planted in the realm of politics and race. In recent years, readers have been able to appreciate Simple's situational humor as well as his poignant questions about social injustice in The Best of Simple and The Return of Simple. Now they can, once again, enjoy the last of Hughes's original Simple books.

The Short Stories of Langston HughesThis 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.

Jesse B. Simple, Simple to his fans, made weekly appearances beginning in 1943 in Langston Hughes' column in the Chicago Defender. Simple may have shared his readers feelings of loss and dispossession, but he also cheered them on with his wonderful wit and passion for life.