The Short Stories of Langston Hughes [Paperback]

The Short Stories of Langston Hughes

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. 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.

Introduction

Bodies in the Moonlight
The Young Glory of Him
The Little Virgin
Luani of the Jungles
Slave on the Block
Cora Unashamed
The Blues I'm Playing
Why, You Reckon?
Little Old Spy
Spanish Blood
On the Road
Gumption
Professor
Big Meeting
Trouble with the Angels
Tragedy at the Baths
Slice Him Down
African Morning
'Tain't So
One Friday Morning
Heaven to Hell
Breakfast in Virginia
Saratoga Rain
Who's Passing for Who?
On the Way Home
Name in the Papers
Sailor Ashore
Something in Common
Mysterious Madame Shanghai
Never Room with a Couple
Powder-white Faces
Pushcart Man
Rouge High
Patron of the Arts
Thank You, M'am
Sorrow for a Midget
Blessed Assurance
Early Autumn
Fine Accommodations
The Gun
His Last Affair
No Place to Make Love
Rock, Church

Appendix: Early Stories

Mary Winosky
Those Who Have No Turkey
Seventy-Five Dollars
The Childhood of Jimmy

Publication History of Hughes's Short Stories

Perhaps more than any other writer in American history, Hughes was able to capture 'the Harlemness of the American predicament' (to quote Ralph Ellison's wonderful phrase), in words that had the ring of truth not just in literary circles but in barbershops and beauty parlors of everyday Harlem itself. Robert G. O'Meally, New York Newsday

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