Volume 1 includes the complete texts of four books of verse by Hughes, including his first book, The Weary Blues (1926), and his second, Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927), as well as other poems published by him during and after the Harlem Renaissance. The Weary Blues announced the arrival of a rare voice in American poetry. A literary descendant of Walt Whitman ("I, too, sing America," Hughes wrote), he chanted the joys and sorrows of black America in unprecedented language. A gifted lyricist, he offered rhythms and cadences that epitomized the particularities of African American creativity, especially jazz and the blues. His second volume, steeped in the blues and controversial because of its frankness, confirmed Hughes as a poet of uncompromising integrity. Then in the 1930s came Dear Lovely Death (1931) and the radical A New Song (1938). Poems such as "Good Morning Revolution" and "Let America Be America Again" made his pen one of the most forceful in America during the Great Depression.

Volume 2 includes the books Shakespeare in Harlem (1942), Jim Crow's Last Stand (1943), Fields of Wonder (1947), and One-Way Ticket (1949). Starting around 1940, Hughes turned away from radical socialism toward strong support for the national war effort; as a poet, he resumed his experimentation in the blues, as Shakespeare in Harlem brilliantly demonstrates. With this change in political emphasis came a renewed commitment to the achievement of civil rights for blacks, which Jim Crow's Last Stand vigorously asserts. In contrast, Fields of Wonder was Hughes' only book devoted almost entirely to lyric verse; but the next volume, One-Way Ticket, restored the balance that was essential to his creative expression as a poet.

Volume 3 collects the poems of the last period of Hughes' life. Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951) brilliantly fused the modernist dissonances of bebop jazz with his perception of Harlem life as both a triumph of hope and a deepening crisis ("What happens to a dream deferred?"). In the tumultuous following years, he refused to relinquish the mantle of the poet, as may be seen in his inspired last two books of verse, Ask Your Mama (1961) and The Panther and the Lash (1967). The former demonstrates Hughes' continuing alertness to the significance of black music as a guide to American reality; here, avant-garde jazz rhythms and allusions fueled an intensity of language that predicted the cultural upheavals of the sixties and seventies. Hughes' last volume, combining old and new poems, emphasized the struggle for civil rights in the face of reactionary defiancé, on the one hand, and the volatility of Black Power, on the other. Vigorous and versatile to the end, Hughes concluded his career as he had begun it: a master poet dedicated to observing and celebrating African American culture in its full complexity.

Although best known as a poet, Langston Hughes was also the author of two novels that richly evoke the black experience in America. First published in 1930 and 1958, respectively, Not without Laughter and Tambourines to Glory reflect the early and late vision of one of the twentieth century's most distinguished men of letters. In his introduction to this combined edition of both novels, Dolan Hubbard addresses Hughes' growing influence on American letters and reveals how a black aesthetic tradition shaped his art and his imagination. Hughes shows us how the discourse of black America informs and alters our understanding of cultural history and of aesthetic values. In Not without Laughter, he movingly tells the story of a black boy growing into manhood in a small Kansas town during the early twentieth century and his experiences with race, family, school, work, music, and religion. His grandmother, a humble religious woman, struggles to keep her family (living with her are two of her three daughters, one son-in-law, and her grandson) together, on the meager income she earns by taking in washing. Set in Harlem, the center of Hughes' spiritual universe, Tambourines to Glory is an urban folk melodrama based on the black fusion of Christian hymns and spirituals with the blues. This comic novel captures the spirit of newly transplanted southern blacks who bend the alien rhythms of the city to the gospel sound. This volume of The Collected Works of Langston Hughes is a testament to a man whose life and writings have had a profound influence on world literature and is proof that Hughes' immense talent embraced not only poetry, but fiction as well.

But someday somebody'll Stand up and talk about me—Black and beautiful—And sing about me. And put on plays about me! I reckon it'll be Me myself! Yes, it'll be me. Langston Hughes is least known for his theatrical endeavors, yet his attention to the theater was lifelong. His love of the stage began in childhood, and from the late 1920s on he was continually writing plays, for black community theater, for theater companies he established himself, and for the Broadway and off-Broadway stage. His early plays endeavor to provide "authentic" representations of African American life, both to counter and correct the stereotypical stage portrayals of African Americans in white theater and to provide suitable plays for black theater companies hungry for scripts that would entertain and challenge black audiences. Volume 5 of The Collected Works of Langston Hughes includes the plays Hughes wrote between 1930 and 1942, alone and in collaboration. Almost all the plays were performed during the same period; a few have never seen the stage, but are included because they indicate the range of Hughes' artistic and political concerns. Because very few of the plays in this volume have been previously published, they disclose a side of Langston Hughes' artistry that is virtually unknown. The collection greatly expands our understanding of the Hughes legacy, and makes us rethink the history of African American theater.

Although Langston Hughes had a lifelong engagement in theater and other performance arts, his work in this area is the least known of his rich and complex contributions to African American expressive culture. This volume focuses on Hughes' plays after 1942, along with all of his other work written for performance, including operas, musicals, radio plays, ballet librettos, and song lyrics, all of which demonstrate his strong determination to inject an African American presence into a range of cultural forms. If Hughes' contributions to African American theater in the 1930s were foundational, in his later stage career he created the theatrical form for which he is best known, the gospel play. Taking advantage of gospel music's crossover success in the 1950s, Hughes wrote four such plays; his most famous, Black Nativity, not only was a hit in New York, but it also toured Europe and is still a Christmas tradition in many African American churches. Generally, Hughes achieved more commercial stage success in this later period. As lyricist for Kurt Weill's Street Scene, he experienced Broadway acclaim; he turned his Simple stories into a musical, Simply Heavenly, and wrote his gospel-musical Tambourines to Glory. In fact, aside from a few educational or occasional pieces, virtually all of Hughes' stage writing after 1942 incorporated music in some form. He wrote five complete operas and several cantatas, as well as the musicals and gospel plays, and hundreds of song lyrics. Hughes' intense engagement with theater and other performance arts lasted more than thirty-five years. In every genre he attempted, Hughes left unforgettable and inspiring work, giving rise to the range and richness of contemporary African American theatrical achievement.

Jesse B. Semple first sprang to life in Langston Hughes' weekly Chicago Defender column in 1943. Almost immediately, the "Simple stories," as they were routinely called, had a large and ever-increasing audience. Simple soon became Harlem's Everyman—an ordinary black workingman, representative of the masses of black folks in the 1940s. Simple had migrated to Harlem, like many other blacks, seeking to escape the racism of the South, and he celebrated his new freedoms despite the economic struggles he still confronted. Simple's bar buddy and foil in the stories is the better-educated, more articulate Boyd, who has never lived in the South. Their conversations permit Simple to speak the wisdom of the working class. By the time the first book of Simple stories was published, Hughes had honed and polished these two characters, enhancing the distinctions between the vernacular language of Simple and the more educated diction of his friend. Remaining within the Afrocentric world that was his chosen sphere, Hughes makes clear the message that Simple and Boyd are very much alike; both are black men in a racially unbalanced society. Both exist in a world within a world, in Harlem, the separate black community of New York City. "You imply that there is no fun to be had around white folks." "I never had none," said Simple. "You have a color complex." "A colored complexion," said Simple. "I said complex, not complexion." "I added the shun myself," said Simple. "I'm colored, and being around white folks makes me feel more colored—since most of them shun Negroes." Countless exchanges between Simple and his companion offer wit and wisdom that remind contemporary readers why Langston Hughes is so special.

In Volume 8 of The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, the genial Harlem everyman, Jesse B. Semple, returns with his more cosmopolitan bar buddy, Ananias Boyd. Social climber Joyce Lane is now Mrs. Jesse B. Semple, and Simple has minimized his flirtatious contacts with other women. Despite these ongoing characters, the later Simple stories are very different from the earlier Simple tales. The later stories evoke the historical and social context within which they were written, a politically dangerous time for the fictional adventures and fantasies of the main characters. The Later Simple Stories returns to print Hughes' third and fourth Simple collections, Simple Stakes a Claim and Simple's Uncle Sam, along with some episodes Hughes did not include in any of his books. Simple Stakes a Claim was published in 1957, and it reflects the troubled and troublesome era of the Cold War and McCarthy hearings. Simple's Uncle Sam appeared in 1965, and it captures the turbulent decade when black Americans asserted their rights, including the privilege to call themselves "Black" and wear their hair in natural styles. The nonviolent strategies of civil disobedience and the violent strategies of urban rioting had converged to amplify African American voices as they demanded justice. The innocent humor of the earlier Simple stories is replaced here by new strengths. Remarkably powerful female characters emerge in this volume. We observe Cousin Minnie's self-preservation skills and her willingness to riot to defend her rights as a citizen. We read about Simple's cousin Lynn Clarisse, who is a social activist educated at Fisk University. And we see Joyce herself emerge from her prim niche to display pride and knowledge about her African heritage. The Later Simple Stories rounds out Hughes' presentation of Jesse B. Semple and the various people of his world. Simple and his foil still make us chuckle, but more important, they make us think. While these episodes often focus on particularities of the times, they also articulate broader truths that remain valuable.

Among the most prolific of American writers, Langston Hughes gained international attention and acclaim in nearly every genre of writing. While scholars and general readers have enjoyed relatively easy access to most of his writings, Hughes' work in one genre—"the essay"—has gone largely unnoticed. From his radical pieces praising revolutionary socialist ideology in the 1930s to the more conservative, previously unpublished "Black Writers in a Troubled World," which he wrote a year before his death, Hughes used the essay form as a vehicle through which to comment on the contemporary issues he found most pressing at various stages of his career. Hughes generated some of his most powerful critiques of economic and racial exploitation and oppression through his masterful essays. It was the essay as a literary form that allowed Hughes to document the essential contributions made by African Americans to literature, music, film, and theater, and to chronicle the immense difficulties black artists faced in gaining recognition, fair remuneration, and professional advancement for these contributions. Finally, it was in certain essays that Hughes most fully represented the unique and endearing persona of the blues-poet-in-exile. Many of the essays and other pieces of short nonfiction included in this volume have long been out of print and will be new to most readers. Through them, Langston Hughes reaffirmed a belief in the political potential of African American writers that remained consistent throughout his forty-six-year professional writing career: "Ours is a social as well as a literary responsibility." Such a belief resounds everywhere in this volume "a true testament of a man committed to the capabilities of language to generate social awareness and, ultimately, to compel social change."

Nearing the end of a distinguished literary career that spanned nearly fifty years, Langston Hughes took on the daunting task of writing the official history of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Beginning with the social, political, and economic contexts that led to the founding of the NAACP in 1909 and ending with a summary of its targeted goals for 1963, Hughes attempted to write a history that would be comprehensive in scope and singular in its purpose of highlighting the ways in which the Association had a direct and positive influence on racial justice in the United States. Focusing on the individuals who had the greatest impact on the NAACP and the issues with which the organization was most concerned in its first fifty years of existence, Hughes produced the widely acclaimed Fight for Freedom, striking an exceptional balance between biography and cultural history. Long before the publication of Fight for Freedom, Hughes had begun writing nonfictional prose about these same issues as a regular columnist and essayist for the nation's most influential African American publications, including the Chicago Defender and Crisis. A selection of these popular columns and other essays—which reveal the extent to which Hughes' unique, varied, and sometimes Blues- tinged narrative voice shifted in tone over the course of his extensive career—is included in this volume. Hughes intersperses historical facts with compelling anecdotes that often frame subtly ironic commentaries on various themes. The result is history that provides a lens through which to view Hughes' attitudes in the early 1960s toward the ways the NAACP addressed the vital social, cultural, political, and economic issues central to its agenda. Fight for Freedom and Other Writings on Civil Rights makes a unique contribution to the oeuvre of an African American writer whose full significance to American literature, history, and culture will continue to be defined well into the twenty-first century.

The twelfth volume of The Collected Works of Langston Hughes contains Hughes' collections of biographies for children and young adults—Famous American Negroes, Famous Negro Music Makers, and Famous Negro Heroes of America—gathered together for the first time. In these works, Hughes sought to remedy decades of historical and cultural neglect by telling the stories of African Americans who had made vital contributions to the construction of the American identity. Hughes made clear his commitment to an inclusive and diverse accounting of the achievements of African Americans on American soil, from vernacular expression to high culture, oratory to combat, geographical exploration to intellectual introspection. His lively and dramatic portraits of African Americans such as Crispus Attucks, Frederick Douglass, Jackie Robinson, and Mahalia Jackson, battling against exclusivity and adversity to achieve their full potential, present a captivating portrait of America. This volume is a valuable record of the emerging African American struggle for civil rights and positive self- determination. It also documents Hughes' interests as he entered the fifth decade of his life and can be read fruitfully alongside his writings for adults at the time, reflecting his sociocultural and political thought.

Introduction by Arnold Rampersad. Langston Hughes, born in 1902, came of age early in the 1920s. In The Big Sea he recounts those memorable years in the two great playgrounds of the decade—Harlem and Paris. In Paris he was a cook and waiter in nightclubs. He knew the musicians and dancers, the drunks and dope fiends. In Harlem he was a rising young poet—at the center of the "Harlem Renaissance." Arnold Rampersad writes in his incisive new introduction to The Big Sea, an American classic: "This is American writing at its best—simpler than Hemingway; as simple and direct as that of another Missouri-born writer...Mark Twain."

In I Wonder as I Wander, Langston Hughes vividly recalls the most dramatic and intimate moments of his life in the turbulent 1930s. His wanderlust leads him to Cuba, Haiti, Russia, Soviet Central Asia, Japan, Spain (during its Civil War), through dictatorships, wars, revolutions. He meets and brings to life the famous and the humble, from Arthur Koestler to Emma, the Black Mammy of Moscow. It is the continuously amusing, wise revelation of an American writer journeying around the often strange and always exciting world he loves.

Stories capturing “the vibrancy of Harlem life, the passions of ordinary black people, and the indignities of everyday racism” by “a great American writer” (Kirkus Reviews). This 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 in the decades that preceded the passage of the Civil Rights Act. 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. “\[Hughes’s fiction\] manifests his ‘wonder at the world.’ As these stories reveal, that wonder has lost little of its shine.” —The Cleveland Plain Dealer

Creative writers have often commented that the imaginative process enables them to find comfort, healing, and restoration from the wounds of life. The darkness of pain and suffering courses like the "flow of human blood in human veins" through the works of Langston Hughes—saturating his essays, librettos, newspaper articles, novels, plays, poems, and short stories. But this darkness is ultimately transformed by catharsis. Hughes was not a translator by profession, and he was definitely aware that to translate can be to betray. Moreover, when this passionately shy North American author engaged the works of several of his internationally acclaimed colleagues, he saw translation not as an end in itself, but as a means to something larger than his own life and works. Hughes was concerned about the similarity of his experiences with those of writers from other cultures. His perennial longing for submersion into the "Big Sea" of black life—whether in the Americas, Europe, Asia, or Africa—prompted him to build bridges between himself and a national/international circle of writers. One of the most effective ways of doing so was to translate works by authors with whom he felt intimately connected and whose cultures illustrated essential correspondences with his own. Bodas de sangre (1933), by the Spanish poet/playwright Federico García Lorca, who was brutally assassinated in 1936, is the story of a bridegroom and lover who fight to the death over the bride-to-be. Part of Hughes' therapy for the emotional scars and wounds that festered in his life was to make accessible a vital work by this Spanish writer who had also experienced alienation and marginality. The poems by Nicolás Guillén that Hughes and Ben Frederic Carruthers translated as Cuba Libre (1948) reveal the mutual admiration and respect between Guillén and Hughes, but they also illustrate Hughes' affirmation of self, family, and community in the international arena. The title Cuba Libre was the original cry for freedom by black, white, and mixed-race patriots who fought for Cuban independence during two major wars of the nineteenth century. As early as 1927, Haitian writer Jacques Roumain had called for the intellectuals of his country to stop imitating European literature and use as models Spanish American and Harlem Renaissance authors. As a tribute to him, Hughes collaborated with Mercer Cook in translating the novel Gouverneurs de la rosée, published after Roumain's death in 1944 as Masters of the Dew (1947). The novel's title conveys its rebellious slant, as it tells the story of Haitian peasants who attempt after centuries of oppression to gain control over their external world.