Book Review: The Big Sea, the autobigraphy of Langston Hughes

THE BIG SEA: Langston Hughes

        How does a black poet achieve wide recognition for his poems in white America in the 1920's? He writes a lot like no other. So, who is Langston Hughes? Reading his autobiography offers a good start. Mr. Hughes was a poet, writer, also called a jazz poet. He was born in 1902 in Missouri. His father was an ambitious man who had attended law school but found it impossible to practice due to an inability to find a position as lawyer and black man. He decided to seek his fortune and his his future elsewhere, outside the racist United States in the 1920's. 

       Langston was raised by his Mother, his grandparents, and an aunt, all  whom he credited with good advice and admirable efforts on his behalf. As he came of age, he decided to spend time with his Father, who then, lived in Mexico, where he worked for an American corporation. He had domestic help, and also owned a large ranch where he raised cattle with the help of locals. He learned of his Father's restless ambitions to overcome his accident of birth as a black American and its second class status. In the 1920's, America turned a blind eye toward renewed racism, especially toward black Americans and their families. At the same time, a new cultural landscape developed in New York City's Harlem. It became the center of New England's black cultural experience with music, theater, education, and the arts. Langston became recognized there for his poetry and his reputation grew from his connection to the Harlem Cultural Experience. While in Mexico, he convinced his Father he wanted help to attend university, Columbia exactly. After denial after denial, Dad relented and he went. His descriptions of that year are notable as he directly confronted the racism he already was aware of. He dropped out. But in time found his way to another institution: Lincoln University of Pennsylvania, an historically black university, where a young Langston thrived, and continued to write his "jazz" poetry.

         Despite extreme poverty, Langston had big ideas about the world and made the effort to realize his dreams by traveling to Europe and experiencing the "Continent". Paris, which was truly a remarkable place in between the wars as it became a haven for expats not only from America, but from those places where many who had lived in "kingdoms"  would never return. He worked aboard ships to get there; and upon arriving, took whatever work he could find to survive(like many of those whom he associated with.) He understood that his race mattered little among the varied political entities he found there. He read Marx and decided that this could perhaps be a solution to the inequality he witnessed at home. He went to Russia and hoped to participate in the making of a documentary film on Black history, but, it did not happen as the US finally recognized Stalin's regime as the legitimate government of revolutionary Russian politics. He came home without succeeding in anyway.

       While he continued to write poetry, he also wrote articles, books, a play, scrips, and essays. He died in 1967 of prostate cancer, and left no heirs. He never married, and produced no offspring.