Langston Hughes (1902-1967), one of the great poets of the Harlem Renaissance, was born in Joplin, Missouri, and spent much of his childhood in Kansas before moving to Harlem. He wrote poetry, short stories, novels, an autobiography, songs, essays, and plays. Among his numerous awards and honors were a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935, a Rosenwald Fellowship in 1940, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Grant in 1947.
About the Introducer: Dr. Joshua Bennett is a poet and scholar who has won numerous awards for his work on the classics of Black American literature. As both a teacher and student of Langston Hughes's work, as well as the work of his contemporaries, we're thrilled to have him on board to write this introduction. Dr. Bennett is the author of
The Sobbing School (Penguin, 2016)--which was a National Poetry Series selection and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He is also the author of
Being Property Once Myself (Harvard University Press, 2020),
Owed (Penguin, 2020),
The Study of Human Life (Penguin, 2022) and
Spoken Word: A Cultural History (Knopf, 2023). He has received fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. He is a Professor of Literature and Distinguished Chair of the Humanities at MIT.