Langston Hughes and the South African Drum Generation: The Correspondence

208 Pages·2010·2.14 MB·English

by  Shane Graham

Langston Hughes and the South African
Drum Generation
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Langston Hughes and the South
African Drum Generation
The Correspondence
Edited by
Shane Graham and John Walters
Introduction by
Shane Graham
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LANGSTON HUGHES AND THE SOUTH AFRICAN DRUM GENERATION
Copyright © Shane Graham and John Walters, 2010.
All rights reserved.
Cover Image: Letter from Ezekiel Mphahlele to Langston Hughes, June 24,
1961. Published with permission of the Professor Ezekiel Mphahlele Trust.
Image courtesy of the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare
Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
First published in 2010 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN: 978–0–230–10293–4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hughes, Langston, 1902–1967.
Langston Hughes and the South African Drum generation : the
correspondence / edited by Shane Graham and John Walters.
p. cm.
ISBN 978–0–230–10293–4 (alk. paper)
1. Hughes, Langston, 1902–1967—Correspondence. 2. Authors,
American—20th century—Correspondence. 3. African American authors—
Correspondence. 4. Authors, South African—20th century—Correspondence.
5. Drum (Johannesburg, South Africa) I. Graham, Shane. II. Walters, John.
III. Title.
PS3515.U274Z597 2010
818(cid:1).5209—dc22 2009047761
[B]
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: July 2010
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America.
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C O N T E N T S
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction
Shane Graham 1
Letters, 1953–1954 25
Letters, 1955–1959 61
Letters, 1960–1961 103
Letters, 1962 137
Letters, 1963–1967 161
Index 191
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A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
A New Faculty Research Grant from the Utah State University Vice
President for Research Office provided material support, and enabled
me to travel to the archives in New Haven and initiate our investiga-
tion into the correspondence between Hughes and the South African
writers. A one-semester research leave courtesy of the USU English
Department also enabled me to research and write the introduction. I
am grateful for both opportunities.
Thanks to the staff at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript
Library at Yale University for their invaluable assistance in finding
and microfilming the original documents. Many thanks are due as
well to the National English Literary Museum in Grahamstown,
South Africa, and especially to Crystal Warren, senior researcher
for NELM.
Without the representation of Neil Salkind at the Salkind Literary
Agency/Studio B Productions, this project might never have seen the
light of day. He has my gratitude.
Katie Fredrickson acted as undergraduate research assistant during
the later stages of preparing the manuscript; I am very thankful for her
hard work and diligence.
Craig Tenney at Harold Ober Associates, Inc., was enormously help-
ful and generous with his time.
At this point I owe Rita Barnard more favors than I am able to
count, but I am thankful for them all.
I am grateful to David Watson for his acting as sounding board and
providing keen insights in the early stages of this project.
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viii Acknowledgments
And for the woman who knows I always save the best for last: Thanks
to Christie for all of her patience, advice, and love.
* * *
The letters that appear in this volume are published courtesy of the
authors or their literary estates. Credit is specifically due as follows:
• Letters by Peter Clarke published with his permission.
• Letters by Langston Hughes printed by permission of Harold Ober
Associates, Inc. Copyright © 2010 by the Estate of Langston
Hughes.
• Letters by Todd Matshikiza published with permission of Esme
Matshikiza (wife of the late Todd Matshikiza and copyright
holder).
• Letters by Ezekiel Mphahlele published with permission of the
Professor Ezekiel Mphahlele Trust.
• Letters by Richard Rive published with permission of his estate.
Shane Graham
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Introduction
Shane Graham
The letters in this volume are a treasure trove of literary and historical
materials. They document an important but until now mostly over-
looked exchange during the middle of the twentieth century between
representatives of two cultures separated by the Atlantic Ocean. When
the correspondence began, in 1953, Langston Hughes was a giant
of American literature: One of the central figures of the “Harlem
Renaissance” of the 1920s, he is best remembered today for his poetry,
but he also left his mark on the novel, the short story, the autobio-
graphical memoir, the stage play, the opera, and the newspaper column.
He was essentially the first African-American writer to make a living
(albeit a precarious one) entirely through his writing and the lecture
circuit. He had traveled all over the world, and by encouraging the
many young writers he encountered in those travels, he helped usher in
the national literatures of Cuba and Haiti.
Though he never traveled to South Africa, Hughes nevertheless
helped to accomplish the same thing there through his involvement
with Johannesburg-based Drum magazine. While he was judging
a short story contest for the magazine, he made contact with Peter
Abrahams, a mixed-race or “coloured” writer from Johannesburg
who had already won international acclaim for his novels and his
autobiography Tell Freedom. The other writers with whom Hughes
struck up a long-distance friendship were largely unknown outside
the readership of Drum magazine. But over the next decade, this
cohort of artists would come to be recognized as the first great move-
ment of black writers and artists in English in South Africa’s history:
Peter Clarke from Cape Town penned a few short stories and poems,
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