Boy, this book took me...I'm ashamed to say, MORE THAN A YEAR to read! Again, I blame the pregnancy, the birth and being a new mom. Let's get into it!
SYNOPSIS
In young adulthood Hughes possessed a nomadic but dedicated spirit that led him from Mexico to Africa and the Soviet Union to Japan, and countless other stops around the globe. Associating with political activists, patrons, and fellow artists, and drawing inspiration from both Walt Whitman and the vibrant Afro-American culture, Hughes soon became the most original and revered of black poets.
MY THOUGHTS
This was an extremely well-written, exhaustive biography. Much like the biography on Alain Locke, who essentially was the father of the Harlem Renaissance, the author--Arnold Rampersad--put his foot in this book...and this is just the first volume!
I am obviously a fan on Langston Hughes, but didn't know much about him beyond the Harlem Renaissance.
In this first volume about his life, he struck me as someone who was lost...which makes sense seeing as how his self-hating father left him and then his mother left him and was sort of in and out of his life, yet always found a way to get money from him.
He stood up for the Black community and longed to be truly included in it, which I related to because growing up, I always felt like an outcast in the Black community for my interests, but I always worked to be the best representative of my race and knew that eventually I would be accepted and feel loved.
When it comes to his romantic life, Hughes seemed to be asexual, in my opinion. However, it was a jaw dropping moment when it was revealed that he had gonorrhea at the end of the book!
Rampersad was great at weaving in the context of the time period and mini biographies of other people while writing about Hughes. I much prefer that to other authors who go on pages-long "context," when really they don't have much information about the subject they're writing about. I can't wait to dive into the second volume!
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