Table Of ContentMontage of a Dream
Montage of a Dream
The Art and Life of
Langston Hughes
Edited by
John Edgar Tidwell and Cheryl R. Ragar
with a foreword byArnold Rampersad
University of Missouri Press Columbia and London
Copyright © 2007 by
The Curators of the University of Missouri
University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201
Printed and bound in the United States of America
All rights reserved
5 4 3 2 1 11 10 09 08 07
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Montage of a dream : the art and life of Langston Hughes / edited by John
Edgar Tidwell and Cheryl R. Ragar ; with a foreword by Arnold Rampersad.
p. cm.
Summary: “Contributors reexamine the continuing relevance of Langston
Hughes’s work and life to American, African American, and diasporic liter-
atures and cultures. Includes fresh perspectives on the often overlooked
“Luani of the Jungles,” Black Magic, and works for children, as well as
Hughes’s more familiar fiction, poetry, essays, dramas, and other writings”
—Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8262-1716-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Hughes, Langston, 1902–1967. 2. Harlem (New York, N.Y.)—Intel-
lectual life—20th century. 3. Poets, American—20th century—Biography.
4. African American poets—Biography. 5. African Americans in literature.
6. Harlem Renaissance. I. Tidwell, John Edgar. II. Ragar, Cheryl R.
PS3515.U274Z6845 2007
818(cid:2).5209—dc22
[B]
2006102013
ø™ This paper meets the requirements of the American National Standard
for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984.
Designer: Jennifer Cropp
Typesetter: The Composing Room of Michigan, Inc.
Printer and binder: Thomson-Shore, Inc.
Typefaces: Palatino, Georgia, and Flamme
For permissions, see p.351
The University of Missouri Press offers its grateful acknowledgment for a
generous contribution from the Office of the Chancellor, University of
Kansas, in support of the publication of this volume.
Contents
Foreword ix
Arnold Rampersad
Acknowledgments xiii
Abbreviations xv
Poeme pour Langston / Poem for Langston xvii
Cheikh Amadou Dieng / Mame Selbee Diouf
Langston Hughes Revisited and Revised: An Introduction 1
John Edgar Tidwell and Cheryl R. Ragar
I. The Sacred and the Secular
Langston Hughes and Aunt Hager’s Children’s Blues
Performance: “Six-Bits Blues” 19
Steven C. Tracy
Almost—But Not Quite—Bluesmen in Langston Hughes’s Poetry 32
Trudier Harris
Natural and Unnatural Circumstances inNot without Laughter 39
Elizabeth Schultz
vi Contents
II. The Public and the Private
The Sounds of Silence: Langston Hughes as a
“Down Low”Brother? 55
John Edgar Tidwell
Langston Hughes on the Open Road: Compulsory
Heterosexuality and the Question of Presence 68
Juda Bennett
Gender Performance and Sexual Subjectivity in Not
without Laughter: Sandy’s Emergent Masculinity 86
Kimberly J. Banks
Mother to Son: The Letters from Carrie Hughes Clark
to Langston Hughes,1928–1938 106
Regennia N. Williams and Carmaletta M. Williams
III. Revolutions Literary and Political
“Luani ofthe Jungles”: Reimagining the Africa of
Heart of Darkness 127
Jeffrey A. Schwarz
Langston Hughes’s Red Poetics and the Practice
of “Disalienation” 135
Robert Young
The Paradox of Modernism inThe Ways ofWhite Folks 147
Sandra Y. Govan
IV. Other Words and Other Worlds
The Empowerment of Displacement 169
Isabel Soto
Contents vii
“It Is the Same Everywhere for Me”: Langston
Hughes and the African Diaspora’s Everyman 181
Lorenzo Thomas
Montage of a Dream Destroyed: Langston Hughes in Spain 195
Michael Thurston
The Russian Connection: Interracialism as Queer
Alliance in The Ways ofWhite Folks 209
Kate A. Baldwin
V. Langston Hughes and the Boundaries of Art
Langston Hughes and the Children’s Literary Tradition 237
Giselle Liza Anatol
Circles of Liberation and Constriction: Dance in
Not without Laughter 259
Joan Stone
The Essayistic Vision of Langston Hughes 284
Christopher C. De Santis
Langston Hughes and the Movies: The Case
of Way Down South 305
Thomas Cripps
Bibliography 319
Notes on the Contributors 335
Index 341
Foreword
Arnold Rampersad
This book, like a well-known speaker being welcomed to the stage be-
fore a large audience, needs no introduction—but it has one, expertly
written by its editors, John Edgar Tidwell and Cheryl R. Ragar. What I of-
fer here at the start of this book would be superfluous and also inferior
were I to call it an introduction to the collection of essays they have so
imaginatively put together. Instead, it is my honor to have been asked to
provide a foreword. An honor it is indeed, since this volume is the
smartest collection of work on Hughes to appear in many a year. It’s a trib-
ute to the editors and contributors but also, of course, a tribute to Lang-
ston Hughes as he continues to exert a power over us that seems at last to
be embedded and destined perhaps to be permanent.
If we are to judge by reputation but also by the hard evidence of visits
to the web sites of organizations such as the Academy of American Poets,
Hughes’s work may well be the main gateway through which many
younger people and especially small children enter the world of formal
poetry. It’s hard to imagine a poet better suited to that almost sacred task.
His verse, like his prose, is typically as clear as water, and just as essential
to life. It is intensely musical, so it is no wonder that the composer Elie
Siegmeister called Hughes the most musical poet of the twentieth centu-
ry. It covers a range of emotions, from the nihilistic to the earthy, exuber-
ant, and idealistic. Now that the children seem to have him (and with his
love of children, for whom he wrote many books, he is surely where he
wishes to be), his important place in our process of literacy and learning
is assured for some time to come. Books such as this one build on that el-
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