Arna Bontemps Langston Hughes Letters 1925 1967

Author : Arna Bontemps
Publisher : Paragon House Publishers
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 566 pages
Book Rating : 4.24/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Arna Bontemps-Langston Hughes Letters, 1925-1967 written by Arna Bontemps and published by Paragon House Publishers. This book was released on 1990 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The work of Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes is a celebration of the triumphant creative spirit in African-American life. From the welding of their friendship in 1925 until Hughes's death in 1967, this volume gathers the best of the forty-two years of correspondence between them. The first letters, written in the midst of the Harlem Renaissance, witness the struggle of two young writers searching for a voice and an identity. By 1941, both Bontemps and Hughes had achieved a certain degree of success, and had become increasingly involved in racial and social struggles. Finally, in the period between 1959 and 1967, we see them react to the civil rights movement. This fascinating collection makes an invaluable contribution to the understanding of twentieth century American culture and one of its most vital components, the African-American heritage which these two correspondents did so much to create. --From book cover.

Author : Arna Wendell Bontemps
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Arna Bontemps-Langston-Hughes Letters written by Arna Wendell Bontemps and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Mary Hricko
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136085386
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.83/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Genesis of the Chicago Renaissance written by Mary Hricko and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-05 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines the genesis of Chicago's two identified literary renaissance periods (1890-1920 and 1930-1950) through the writings of Dreiser, Hughes, Wright, and Farrell. The relationship of these four writers demonstrates a continuity of thought between the two renaissance periods. By noting the affinities of these writers, patterns such as the rise of the city novel, the development of urban realism, and the shift to modernism are identified as significant connections between the two periods. Although Dreiser, Wright, and Farrell are more commonly thought of as Chicago writers, this study argues that Langston Hughes is a transitional, pivotal figure between the two periods. Through close readings and contextualization, the influence of Chicago writing on American literature--in such areas as realism and naturalism, as well as proletarian and ethnic fiction--becomes apparent.

Author : Langston Hughes
Publisher : Knopf
ISBN 13 : 0385353561
Total Pages : 482 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Selected Letters of Langston Hughes written by Langston Hughes and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first comprehensive selection from the correspondence of the iconic and beloved Langston Hughes. It offers a life in letters that showcases his many struggles as well as his memorable achievements. Arranged by decade and linked by expert commentary, the volume guides us through Hughes’s journey in all its aspects: personal, political, practical, and—above all—literary. His letters range from those written to family members, notably his father (who opposed Langston’s literary ambitions), and to friends, fellow artists, critics, and readers who sought him out by mail. These figures include personalities such as Carl Van Vechten, Blanche Knopf, Zora Neale Hurston, Arna Bontemps, Vachel Lindsay, Ezra Pound, Richard Wright, Kurt Weill, Carl Sandburg, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Alice Walker, Amiri Baraka, and Muhammad Ali. The letters tell the story of a determined poet precociously finding his mature voice; struggling to realize his literary goals in an environment generally hostile to blacks; reaching out bravely to the young and challenging them to aspire beyond the bonds of segregation; using his artistic prestige to serve the disenfranchised and the cause of social justice; irrepressibly laughing at the world despite its quirks and humiliations. Venturing bravely on what he called the “big sea” of life, Hughes made his way forward always aware that his only hope of self-fulfillment and a sense of personal integrity lay in diligently pursuing his literary vocation. Hughes’s voice in these pages, enhanced by photographs and quotations from his poetry, allows us to know him intimately and gives us an unusually rich picture of this generous, visionary, gratifyingly good man who was also a genius of modern American letters.

Author : Joshua M. Murray
Publisher : Liverpool University Press
ISBN 13 : 1949979563
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Editing the Harlem Renaissance written by Joshua M. Murray and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-01 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his introduction to the foundational 1925 text The New Negro, Alain Locke described the “Old Negro” as “a creature of moral debate and historical controversy,” necessitating a metamorphosis into a literary art that embraced modernism and left sentimentalism behind. This was the underlying theoretical background that contributed to the flowering of African American culture and art that would come to be called the Harlem Renaissance. While the popular period has received much scholarly attention, the significance of editors and editing in the Harlem Renaissance remains woefully understudied. Editing the Harlem Renaissance foregrounds an in-depth, exhaustive approach to relevant editing and editorial issues, exploring not only those figures of the Harlem Renaissance who edited in professional capacities, but also those authors who employed editorial practices during the writing process and those texts that have been discovered and/or edited by others in the decades following the Harlem Renaissance. Editing the Harlem Renaissance considers developmental editing, textual self-fashioning, textual editing, documentary editing, and bibliography. Chapters utilize methodologies of authorial intention, copy-text, manuscript transcription, critical edition building, and anthology creation. Together, these chapters provide readers with a new way of viewing the artistic production of one of the United States’ most important literary movements.

Author : Arnold Rampersad
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199874522
Total Pages : 565 pages
Book Rating : 4.21/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume II: 1941-1967, I Dream a World written by Arnold Rampersad and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001-11-30 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: February 1, 2002 marks the 100th birthday of Langston Hughes. To commemorate the centennial of his birth, Arnold Rampersad has contributed new Afterwords to both volumes of his highly-praised biography of this most extraordinary and prolific American writer. The second volume in this masterful biography finds Hughes rooting himself in Harlem, receiving stimulation from his rich cultural surroundings. Here he rethought his view of art and radicalism, and cultivated relationships with younger, more militant writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Amiri Bakara. Rampersads Afterword to volume two looks further into his influence and how it expanded beyond the literary as a result of his love of jazz and blues, his opera and musical theater collaborations, and his participation in radio and television. In addition, Rempersad explores the controversial matter of Hughess sexuality and the possibility that, despite a lack of clear evidence, Hughes was homosexual. Exhaustively researched in archival collections throughout the country, especially in the Langston Hughes papers at Yale Universitys Beinecke Library, and featuring fifty illustrations per volume, this anniversary edition will offer a new generation of readers entrance to the life and mind of one of the twentieth centurys greatest artists.

Author : Lawrence Patrick Jackson
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 9780820329932
Total Pages : 524 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Ralph Ellison written by Lawrence Patrick Jackson and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author, intellectual, and social critic, Ralph Ellison (1914-94) was a pivotal figure in American literature and history and arguably the father of African American modernism. Universally acclaimed for his first novel, Invisible Man, a masterpiece of modern fiction, Ellison was recognized with a stunning succession of honors, including the 1953 National Book Award. Despite his literary accomplishments and political activism, however, Ellison has received surprisingly sparse treatment from biographers. Lawrence Jackson’s biography of Ellison, the first when it was published in 2002, focuses on the author’s early life. Powerfully enhanced by rare photographs, this work draws from archives, literary correspondence, and interviews with Ellison’s relatives, friends, and associates. Tracing the writer’s path from poverty in dust bowl Oklahoma to his rise among the literary elite, Jackson explores Ellison’s important relationships with other stars, particularly Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, and examines his previously undocumented involvement in the Socialist Left of the 1930s and 1940s, the black radical rights movement of the same period, and the League of American Writers. The result is a fascinating portrait of a fraternal cadre of important black writers and critics--and the singularly complex and intriguing man at its center.

Author : Wallace D. Best
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479847399
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.96/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Langston's Salvation written by Wallace D. Best and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2019-02-01 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2018 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in Textual Studies, presented by the American Academy of Religion A new perspective on the role of religion in the work of Langston Hughes Langston's Salvation offers a fascinating exploration into the religious thought of Langston Hughes. Known for his poetry, plays, and social activism, the importance of religion in Hughes’ work has historically been ignored or dismissed. This book puts this aspect of Hughes work front and center, placing it into the wider context of twentieth-century American and African American religious cultures. Best brings to life the religious orientation of Hughes work, illuminating how this powerful figure helped to expand the definition of African American religion during this time. Best argues that contrary to popular perception, Hughes was neither an avowed atheist nor unconcerned with religious matters. He demonstrates that Hughes’ religious writing helps to situate him and other black writers as important participants in a broader national discussion about race and religion in America. Through a rigorous analysis that includes attention to Hughes’s unpublished religious poems, Langston’s Salvation reveals new insights into Hughes’s body of work, and demonstrates that while Hughes is seen as one of the most important voices of the Harlem Renaissance, his writing also needs to be understood within the context of twentieth-century American religious liberalism and of the larger modernist movement. Combining historical and literary analyses with biographical explorations of Langston Hughes as a writer and individual, Langston’s Salvation opens a space to read Langston Hughes’ writing religiously, in order to fully understand the writer and the world he inhabited.

Author : Laurie Ousley
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1527566455
Total Pages : 440 pages
Book Rating : 4.53/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book To See the Wizard written by Laurie Ousley and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2021-02-19 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To See the Wizard: Politics and the Literature of Childhood takes its central premise, as the title indicates, from L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Upon their return to The Emerald City after killing the Wicked Witch of the West, the task the Wizard assigned them, Dorothy, the Tin Woodman, Scarecrow, and Lion learn that the wizard is a “humbug,” merely a man from Nebraska manipulating them and the citizens of both the Emerald City and of Oz from behind a screen. Yet they all continue to believe in the powers they know he does not have, still insisting he grant their wishes. The image of the man behind the screen—and the reader’s continued pursuit of the Wizard—is a powerful one that has at its core an issue central to the study of children’s literature: the relationship between the adult writer and the child reader. As Jack Zipes, Perry Nodelman, Daniel Hade, Jacqueline Rose, and many others point out, before the literature for children and young adults actually reaches these intended readers, it has been mediated by many and diverse cultural, social, political, psychological, and economic forces. These forces occasionally work purposefully in an attempt to consciously socialize or empower, training the reader into a particular identity or way of viewing the world, by one who considers him or herself an advocate for children. Obviously, these “wizards” acting in literature can be the writers themselves, but they can also be the publishers, corporations, school boards, teachers, librarians, literary critics, and parents, and these advocates can be conservative, progressive, or any gradation in between. It is the purpose of this volume to interrogate the politics and the political powers at work in literature for children and young adults. Childhood is an important site of political debate, and children often the victims or beneficiaries of adult uses of power; one would be hard-pressed to find a category of literature more contested than that written for children and adolescents. Peter Hunt writes in his introduction to Understanding Children’s Literature, that children’s books “are overtly important educationally and commercially—with consequences across the culture, from language to politics: most adults, and almost certainly the vast majority in positions of power and influence, read children’s books as children, and it is inconceivable that the ideologies permeating those books had no influence on their development.” If there were a question about the central position literature for children and young adults has in political contests, one needs to look no further than the myriad struggles surrounding censorship. Mark I. West observes, for instance, “Throughout the history of children’s literature, the people who have tried to censor children’s books, for all their ideological differences, share a rather romantic view about the power of books. They believe, or at least they profess to believe, that books are such a major influence in the formation of children’s values and attitudes that adults need to monitor every word that children read.” Because childhood and young-adulthood are the sites of political debate for issues ranging from civil rights and racism to the construction and definition of the family, indoctrinating children into or subverting national and religious ideologies, the literature of childhood bears consciously political analysis, asking how socialization works, how children and young adults learn of social, cultural and political expectations, as well as how literature can propose means of fighting those structures. To See the Wizard: Politics and the Literature of Childhood intends to offer analysis of the political content and context of literature written for and about children and young adults. The essays included in To See the Wizard analyze nineteenth and twentieth century literature from America, Britain, Australia, the Caribbean, and Sri Lanka that is for and about children and adolescents. The essays address issues of racial and national identity and representation, poverty and class mobility, gender, sexuality and power, and the uses of literature in the healing of trauma and the construction of an authentic self.

Author : W. Jason Miller
Publisher : Reaktion Books
ISBN 13 : 1789142555
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Langston Hughes written by W. Jason Miller and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2020-01-24 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the first black author in America to make his living exclusively by writing, Langston Hughes inspired a generation of writers and activists. One of the pioneers of jazz poetry, Hughes led the Harlem Renaissance, while Martin Luther King, Jr., invoked Hughes’s signature metaphor of dreaming in his speeches. In this new biography, W. Jason Miller illuminates Hughes’s status as an international literary figure through a compelling look at the relationship between his extraordinary life and his canonical works. Drawing on unpublished letters and manuscripts, Miller addresses Hughes’s often ignored contributions to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, as well as his complex and well-guarded sexuality, and repositions him as a writer rather than merely the most beloved African American poet of the twentieth century.