"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

"[Hughes's] fiction...manifests his 'wonder at the world.' As these stories reveal, that wonder has lost little of its shine." --Brooke Horvath, The Cleveland Plain Dealer

"A good example of how Hughes attempted the balancing act of writing an engaged literary and genuinely popular literature that spoke for and of the everyday lives of African-Americans." --James Smethurst, Chicago Tribune