Bücher von Langston Hughes

Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life is a 1930 play by American authors Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. The process of writing the play led Hughes and Hurston, who had been close friends, to sever their relationship. Mule Bone was not staged until 1991, when it was produced in New York City by the Lincoln Center Theater. The play begins in Eatonville, Florida, on a Saturday afternoon with Jim and Dave fighting for Daisy's affection. The two men come to blows, and Jim picks up a hock bone from a mule and knocks Dave out. Jim is arrested and held for trial in Joe Clarke's barn.On Monday, the trial begins in the Macedonia Baptist Church. The townspeople are divided along religious lines: Jim's Methodist supporters sit on one side of the church, Dave's Baptist supporters on the other. The issue to be decided at the trial is whether or not Jim has committed a crime. Jim admits he hit Dave but denies it was a crime. Elder Simms argues on Jim's behalf that a weapon is necessary to commit a crime, and nowhere in the Bible does it say a mule bone is a weapon. Elder Childers, representing Dave, says Samson used a donkey's jawbone to kill 3,000 men (citing Judges 18:18), so the hock bone of a mule must be even more powerful. Joe Clarke declares Jim guilty and banishes him from town for two years.Act III takes place some time later, with Daisy encountering Jim outside of town. She tells him she's been worried about him, but he's skeptical. She demonstrates the sincerity of her affection and Dave comes upon the couple. The two men engage in a war of words to try to show which of them loves Daisy more. The contest ends when it becomes clear that Daisy expects her man to work for the white people who employ her. Jim and Dave are reconciled, and neither remains interested in courting Daisy. The two men return to Eatonville. Mule Bone was produced for the first time in 1991 by the Lincoln Center Theater, more than 60 years after it was written. It opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway on February 14, 1991, to generally negative reviews.Reviewing Mule Bone for The New York Times, Frank Rich wrote that it was "an evening that can most kindly be described as innocuous". He described it as a "broad, often bland quasi-musical". Also writing in The New York Times, David Richards said of Mule Bone: "it's just not a very good play." Both critics suggested the play might have been much better had Hughes and Hurston finished their collaboration.The production closed on April 14, 1991, after 68 performances. (wikipedia.org)

2022 Reprint of the 1926 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. With an introduction by Carl Van Vechten. The Weary Blues is Langston Hughes's first published collection of poems, immediately celebrated as a tour de force upon its release. First published in 1926, the collection of poetry remains a critically acclaimed literary work and still evokes a fresh, contemporary feeling and offers a powerful reflection of the Black experience in Harlem in the 1920s. From the title poem "The Weary Blues," echoing the sounds of the blues, to "Dream Variation," ringing with joyfulness, to the "Epilogue" that mimics Walt Whitman in its opening line, "I, too, sing America," Hughes writes clearly and colorfully, and his words remain prophetic and relevant today. Langston Hughes was only twenty-four when he published this collection of poems. The poems included here blend vernacular speech and musical rhythms to offer a bracing perspective on the African American experience. Traversing a wide range of settings-including the jazz clubs of Harlem, expansive natural landscapes, and seaside taverns-Hughes's voice as a poet ties these various places together. The collection's themes are equally wide-ranging: Hughes explores the depth of the soul in "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," the pain of endurance in "Mother to Son," and death in the title poem's haunting requiem for a weary blues singer. Taken together, these poems offer a singular expression of joy, pride, and anguish from one of the leading voices of the Harlem Renaissance.Contents: Introducing Langston Hughes to the Reader / Carl Van Vechten -- Proem -- pt. I. The Weary Blues -- The Weary Blues -- Jazzonia -- Negro Dancers -- The Cat and the Saxophone -- Young Singer -- Cabaret -- To Midnight Nan at Leroy's -- To A little Lover-Lass, dead -- Harlem Night Club -- Nude Young Dancer -- Young Prostitute -- To a Black Dancer -- Song for a Banjo Dance -- Blues Fantasy -- Lenox Avenue : Midnight -- pt. II. Dream Variations -- Dream Variation -- Winter Moon -- Poeme d'Automne -- Fantasy in Purple -- March Moon -- Joy -- pt. III. The Negro Speaks of Rivers -- The Negro Speaks of Rivers -- Cross -- The Jester -- The South -- As I Grew Older -- Aunt Sue's Stories -- Poem -- pt. IV. Black Pierrot -- A Black Pierrot -- Harlem Night Song -- Songs to the Dark Virgin -- Ardella -- Poem-To the Black Beloved -- When Sue Wears Red -- Pierrot -- pt. V. Water-Front Streets -- Water-Front Streets -- A farewell -- Long Trip -- Port Town -- Sea Calm -- Caribbean Sunset -- Young Sailor -- Seascape -- Natcha -- Sea Charm -- Death of an Old Seaman -- pt. VI. Shadows in the Sun -- Beggar Boy -- Troubled Woman -- Suicide's Note -- Sick Room -- Soledad -- To the Dark Mercedes -- Mexican Market Woman -- After Many Springs -- Young Bride -- The dream Keeper -- Poem (To F.S.) -- pt. VII. Our Land --Our Land -- Lament for Dark Peoples -- Afraid -- Poem-For the Portrait of an African Boy -- Summer Night -- Disillusion -- Danse Africaine -- The White Ones -- Mother to Son -- Poem -- Epilogue.

Langston Hughes's most beloved character comes back to life in this extraordinary collectionLangston Hughes is best known as a poet, but he was also a prolific writer of theater, autobiography, and fiction. None of his creations won the hearts and minds of his readers as did Jesse B. Semple, better known as "Simple." Simple speaks as an Everyman for African Americans in Uncle Sam's America. With great wit, he expounds on topics as varied as women, Gospel music, and sports heroes--but always keeps one foot planted in the realm of politics and race. In recent years, readers have been able to appreciate Simple's situational humor as well as his poignant questions about social injustice in The Best of Simple and The Return of Simple. Now they can, once again, enjoy the last of Hughes's original Simple books.

The Short Stories of Langston HughesThis 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. 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.

Jesse B. Simple, Simple to his fans, made weekly appearances beginning in 1943 in Langston Hughes' column in the Chicago Defender. Simple may have shared his readers feelings of loss and dispossession, but he also cheered them on with his wonderful wit and passion for life.

The only collaboration between the two brightest lights of the Harlem Renaissance--Zora Neale Hurston and Langston HughesIn 1930, two giants of African American literature joined forces to create a lively, insightful, often wildly farcical look inside a rural Southern black community--the three-act play Mule Bone. In this hilarious story, Jim and Dave are a struggling song-and-dance team, and when a woman comes between them, chaos ensues in their tiny Florida hometown. This extraordinary theatrical work broke new ground while triggering a bitter controversy between the collaborators that kept it out of the public eye for sixty years.This edition of the rarely seen stage classic features Hurston's original short story, "The Bone of Contention," as well as the complete recounting of the acrimonious literary dispute that prevented Mule Bone from being produced or published until decades after the authors' deaths.

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."