The life of Langston Hughes /

This thorough, insightful volume establishes a new standard of excellence in Afro-American literary biography. Drawing on extensive interviews and the previously closed Langston Hughes papers housed in Yale's Bienecke Library, Rampersad combines an illuminating biographical study with some of the most insightful critical commentary to appear on Hughes's writing. The first of two volumes, I, Too, Sing America covers Hughes's family background, education, extensive early travels, and the early stages of his literary career. Rampersad's discussions of Hughes's involvement with the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s and with leftist politics during the 1930s reflect both the continuity and the development of the young writer's thought. Among the many strengths of the book are Rampersad's judicious treatments of Hughes's sexuality and of his complex personal/professional relationships with Zora Neale Hurston and Harlem Renaissance patron Charlotte Mason. Avoiding excessive detail and unwarranted speculation, the biography is written in an engaging narrative style. When complete The Life of Langston Hughes will replace Faith Berry's Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond Harlem (CH, Oct '83) as the standard work on a poet who is only beginning to assume his proper position alongside T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, H.D., and Robert Frost in the American literary canon. Strongly recommended for all libraries.-C. Werner, University of Wisconsin

The first volume of Rampersad's biography of the American poet and writer takes Hughes from a tumultuous childhood in the Midwest, through worldwide travels and ramblings, to the early literary successes in New York. Tracing Hughes' development and experiences, the book highlights the character of the artist, portraying him as a driven man who devoted his life and energy to his writing. The question of Hughes' sexuality asexuality as Rampersad judges it is explored a bit defensively, but the explanation seems all of a piece with the portrait the author has industriously researched. The biography is also more than just a study of Hughes, as it also looks at the group of black writers and artists who were struggling with their art and the emerging questions of racial identity during the first half of this century in the U.S. Notes and index. JB. 818'.5209 Hughes, Langston Biography / Poets, American 20th century Biography [OCLC] 86-2565

A sympathetic, yet clear-eyed portrait of one of America's most controversial writers that also manages to be a sweeping depiction of the black experience in this country and abroad during the first four decades of the 20th century. Hughes is an ideal subject about which to construct this type of biography-cum-social history; he was at or near the epicenter of much of the cultural, social and political turbulence that marked those years. Rampersad (English/Rutgers) records both Hughes' life and the era's shocks and aftershocks with admirable clarity and a fine sense of their larger implications. During the first 40 years of his life (the period covered here), Hughes came in contact with most of the major figures in both black and white artistic and civil-rights circles--W.E.B. DuBois, Countee Cullen, Alfred Knopf, Carl Van Vechten, Josephine Baker, Paul Robeson, Ernest Hemingway, Arthur Koestler, Richard Wright, among others. Rampersad delineates each of them in vignettes that capture their personalities in a few evocative details. There is his description of an exchange between Hughes and Josephine Baker, for example, in which ""La Bakaire"" falls into a pseudo-Chevalier accent when telling Hughes ""how I. . .have learn zee loop-zee-loop."" ""An English never learned in the slums of St. Louis,"" is Rampersad's straight-faced comment. The locales are equally colorful, ranging from the Congo to Harlem during the ""Renaissance""; from the Paris of ""Bricktop"" to Moscow in the mid-30's; from Loyalist Spain to Hemingway's Cuba; from the South of the Scottsboro Boys to the Carmel of Robinson Jeffers and Vachel Lindsay. Rampersad does not shy away from the ambiguities and ironies in Hughes' life--his possible homosexuality, his refusal to acknowledge the injustices in Soviet society even when confronting them face to face during a trip to Russia, his willingness to accept financial assistance from ""capitalist"" patrons while espousing the socialist cause. Rampersad resolutely refuses to ""beatify"" his subject. And, as might be expected, the author is just as evenhanded in his evaluations of Hughes' writings. Strengths and weaknesses are both pointed out; successes and failures are analyzed with equal care. Neither exposÉ nor hagiography, this is a near-perfect example of the biographer's art, balanced and thought-provoking. One eagerly awaits the appearance of Volume II. Fifty halftone illustrations (not seen) augment the text. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.