This informative edition explores the poetry of Langston Hughes through the lens of race. Coverage includes an examination of Hughes's life and influences; a look at key ideas related to race in Hughes's poetry, including the influence of African-American music, the use of poetry to address racial problems, and the politics of Hughes's anti-lynching poems; and contemporary perspectives on race, such as the decline of civil rights reform and the role of hip-hop in shaping black music.

Langston Hughes electrified readers and launched a renaissance in Black writing in America—the poems in this collection were chosen by Hughes himself shortly before his death and represent stunning work from his entire career. The poems Hughes wrote celebrated the experience of invisible men and women: of slaves who "rushed the boots of Washington"; of musicians on Lenox Avenue; of the poor and the lovesick; of losers in "the raffle of night." They conveyed that experience in a voice that blended the spoken with the sung, that turned poetic lines into the phrases of jazz and blues, and that ripped through the curtain separating high from popular culture. They spanned the range from the lyric to the polemic, ringing out "wonder and pain and terror—and the marrow of the bone of life." The collection includes "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," "The Weary Blues," "Still Here," "Song for a Dark Girl," "Montage of a Dream Deferred," and "Refugee in America." It gives us a poet of extraordinary range, directness, and stylistic virtuosity.

Here, for the first time, is a complete collection of Langston Hughes's poetry - 860 poems that sound the heartbeat of black life in America during five turbulent decades, from the 1920s through the 1960s.

This informative edition explores the poetry of Langston Hughes through the lens of race. Coverage includes an examination of Hughes's life and influences; a look at key ideas related to race in Hughes's poetry, including the influence of African-American music, the use of poetry to address racial problems, and the politics of Hughes's anti-lynching poems; and contemporary perspectives on race, such as the decline of civil rights reform and the role of hip-hop in shaping black music.

Immediately celebrated as a tour de force upon its release, Langston Hughes's first published collection of poems still offers a powerful reflection of the Black experience. From "The Weary Blues" to "Dream Variation," Hughes writes clearly and colorfully, and his words remain prophetic.

Provides an examination of the use of enslavement and emancipation in classic literary works.