New Directions

Volume 11 | Issue 2 Article 8

1-1-1984 Book Reviews Editorial Staff

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revolution in Russia, declared that it on the nine-member committee over­ worked, and with thousands of others in looked Hughes's reference to Jesus as a THE ARTS every language produced a hodgepodge of "nigger," but condemned him for calling ideologically inspired poetry, essays and Jesus a "bastard." Hughes was passed plays. Much of it was (as in "Revolution" over and the medal went to Richard below) transparent propaganda meant to Wright, which made about as much call forth an instant response from sense as awarding the Nobel Peace Prize frontline fighters: to Malcolm X instead of Martin Luther King, Jr. Great m ob that know s no fear C om e here! Of a bolder generation than any writer B ooks And raise your hand who has previously attempted a biog­ Against this man raphy of , Faith Berry of iron and steel and gold has probed deeply into the poet's com­ Who's bought and sold plex personality and shed light on sig­ You — nificant areas of the Harlem Renais­ Langston Each one for the last thousand years sance. That Hughes was attracted to C om e here. men has long been a shared knowledge Great mob that knows no fear, among the cognoscenti, but it is not Hughes: And tear him limb from limb generally appreciated how widespread Split his golden throat homosexuality was among many of the Ear to ear stalwarts of the Renaissance. Berry notes Before and this not to titillate but to shed light on And end his time forever, N ow — some of the leading literati of the period. Beyond This y ear— Berry also sheds light on another Great mob that knows no fear touchy issue: that of the relationship Harlem If Hughes wished to shock, he certainly between Black Renaissance figures and got his wish when, in the early 1930s, he their white patrons. Hughes and the by Faith Berry wrote a score of blasphemous poems, scholar Alain Locke— along with Lawrence Hill and Company Westport, Conn., novelist and folklorist Zora Neale 1983, 376 pp. including "Goodbye, Christ" (which he would live to regret). The poem below, Hurston and artist Aaron Douglas— had "Christ in Alabama," almost got him a common white Park Avenue benefac­ Reviewed by Julian Mayfield lynched in Chapel Hill, N.C. tor, Charlotte Mason. Christ is a nigger In many ways, this patron (Mason), is eading this excellent biography Beaten and black one of the most astonishing characters in is as engrossing as opening a O, bare your back. this biography; one immediately sus­ John LeCarre novel for the first pects she had been plucked out of the time. It is full of surprises, and Mary is his m other— grand parade of English eccentrics and Rnot a little humbling, for anyone who, M am m y o f the South dropped into a New York setting. In her like this reviewer, thought he knew Silence your mouth. seventies when Locke introduced Langston Hughes and several of the Hughes into her circle, Mason, in the God's His Father— hundreds of real life characters who vogue, worshipped "primitivism" in all White master above crowded the pages of the writer's richly things and people Black and African. Grant us your love. tapestried, nomadic, and enigmatic life. Generous with her money, she was a There was so much in his life, so many Most holy bastard hard taskmaster who made her Black places and significant people, that one Of the bleeding mouth: friends dance to her tune. At one point comes away from Faith Berry's book Nigger Christ she insisted that Hughes should write admiring not only her scholarship and On the cross of the South. her a letter almost every day. He did. For unlabored writing style, but also her three and a half years, after 1927, Hughes I have never believed that the pen was ability to give them each the amount of played the game. Zora Neale Hurston mightier than the sword, but it certainly attention deserved. If Hughes had done worked the old woman for all she could could draw blood. From the early 1930s the decent thing, written only a few get. And Locke enthusiastically reported when Hughes travelled through much of books and poems and essays, and then to her every movement of Black artists the Soviet Union with the Hungarian settled down at a college somewhere, we he could discern, especially of the errant writer Arthur Koestler, and then on to could safely stash him away in a nice Hughes. This continued for more than a China where he talked with Madam Sun little academic niche, and be done with decade up to the time of her death. Yat-sen, widow of the founder of the him. Chinese Republic, and Japan where his I have called attention to the saga of But, no— his productive life spread over writings were well known, he was har­ Charlotte Mason not only because, as set the four most important and distinctive assed by secret police, apparently with out by Faith Berry, it is bitterly enter­ decades of our century. In the 1920s, "the the encouragement of J. Edgar Hoover's taining, but also pointedly instructive. jazz age," his clear and youthfully arro­ new Federal Bureau of Investigation. As Many critics and observers have main­ gant voice was the declaration of Black late as 1960, he was still haunted by tained that there probably would have creative spirits everywhere. In the 1930s, "Christ in Alabama." And when he was been no Harlem Renaissance had it not in the wake of the collapse of world nominated for the NAACP's prestigious been for white patronage money. For all capitalism, he went to see the young Spingarn Award, some powerful people his contradictions, Hughes himself was

Published by Digital HowardNEW @ Howard DIRECTIONS University, JANUARY 1984 1 New Directions, Vol. 11 [], Iss. 2, Art. 8 under no illusions about the period. He A few months later, over lunch at under an assumed name. There he was wrote later, "Some Harlemites thought Frank's in Harlem, I told him about my treated like an indigent until he was the race problem had been solved next novel, and he urged me not to frivol recognized by a Black orderly. Only a few through art... I don't know what made away my time waiting for publication, close friends knew where he was. He them think that— except that they were but to get to work on my next book. I died alone in his sleep on May 22, at age mostly intellectuals doing the thinking. wondered what his case was. I was full of 65. □ energy and ideas, and fully expected to The ordinary Negroes hadn't heard of The reviewer is Writer-in-Residence, Department of the Negro Renaissance." turn out a dozen books in the next five English, Howard University. years. In 1960 and 1961, he passed along The relevant question about white pa­ to me book review assignments he no tronage is not why it was accepted, but longer had time for, and even forced me where was the B lack patronage? The on his prestigious agency where every­ quick and easy answer has always been body seemed as famous as he was. (At that there were no Black millionaires, least I had the good sense to bow out as but even that is not true. If for the mo­ soon as I decently could.) ment we grant that point, have not our institutions, especially our churches, At the time I did not know of the great Black Apollo supported a dozen generations of edu­ work he had done, nor that he had been cated and uneducated con men who took savaged by Senator Joseph McCarthy's from Black communities far more than committee, which had beaten him to the of Science— they ever brought to them? At the same wall and tried to force him to recant time our writers and other artists, whose much of his most militant anti-racist mountain of work testifies to their dedi­ and anti-capitalist poetry and denounce The life of cation to racial purpose and direction, his former friends and political associ­ have had to go begging, and very often ates. He hadn't hurled defiance in the Ernest cease creative effort altogether. committe's face as had the more secure and several whites. (Robe­ Berry, a free-lance writer, researcher and son would die under the hammer, and Everett Just editor, devoted more than 10 years to the the whites who survived would be re­ making of this solid book. Clearly a habilitated.) Instead, Langston had by Kenneth R. Manning Oxford University Press, New York, 1983, labor of love, she nevertheless poked into worked a deal with the committee. 397 pp. the dark crevices and uncovered the warts which make humans of us all. How to explain it? One incident may What emerges is a full-blown portrait of help. Reviewed by W. Montague Cobb one of the nation's most talented, pro­ In 1941 Hughes received a small Rosen- his beautifully written, lific and versatile writers who worked in wald Fund fellowship to write several meticulously researched biog­ every area of literature. Famous before he sketches on Frederick Douglass. De­ raphy published in the centenn­ was 30, Hughes achieved recognition in pressed with hospital bills and debts, he ial year of the birth of its sub­ every part of the world where people read wrote to a friend that "my main interest ject, holds the mirror up to the American and hear words and through their images is centered on trying to get a new brown environment of the last century and the dared to dream of freedom. That he was suit... never having had one... I'd just as effect of this on one gifted personality of not rewarded in his own country attests well go back to waiting table and get a that period. more to our enduring legacy of racism suit on credit. You know, being a 'great' than to any deficiencies of his. author doesn't give one the credit rating Ernest Everett Just was born in Charles­ of a guy with a $12.00 a week job..." A ton, South Carolina, August 14,1883. His Every writer who reads Langston few weeks later, as his biographer re­ father died when he was not yet four, and Hughes: Before and Beyond Harlem will cords, he bought a new brown suit, his able mother became his major inspira­ be astounded and perhaps dismayed by matching shoes, and a tie. Despite his tional force. It is to her that he inscribed the enormous amount of work the man productivity, Hughes lived much of his his opus magnum, "The of the did. In the end, as he was wont to say, life on the edge of poverty, always under­ Cell Surface," published by Blakiston in this is the only thing that counts. Indeed, paid and often cheated by publishers and 1939. Kenneth Manning carefully details for a long time Berry's book will be the producers. the travails of the family when Ernest definitive work on Langston Hughes. Just was young. Near the end of his life, all sorts of I believe I first saw Hughes at the Henry honors and recognition came his way, His mother, Mary Mathews Just, was a Hudson Hotel in New York in 1959. The including honorary degrees and offers to courageous and resourceful woman of event was billed as The First Negro be writer-in-residence at several univer­ great vision. After he had completed the Writers Conference, and we younger sities. He never felt the world owed him classical course at what is now South people expected the famous man to a living because he had labored so long Carolina State College at Orangeburg in come and give us ideological leadership and so well in every imaginable area of 1899 and became a licensed teacher at age in our struggle against racism. Instead, literature, but he would not have been 15, Just decided that teaching was not for he devoted his speech to developments human had he not felt some bitterness. him. in publishing, and possible opportunities in motion pictures and the still rela­ On May 6,1967, Langston Hughes suf­ In the pages of the Christian Endeaver tively new television industry. I recall fered an attack at the Wellington Hotel World, his mother read an advertisement that most of us were vaguely in New York City. He took a taxi to the for a school in Meriden, New Hampshire disappointed. Polyclinic Hospital where he registered (Kimball Union Academy) which had

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