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List Price: $34.99Amazon.com's Price: $23.38 You Save: $11.61 (33%)as of 12/21/2009 16:25 EST
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.5209
EAN: 9780195146424
Edition: 2
ISBN: 0195146425
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 528
Publication Date: January 10, 2002
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com Review:
Rampersad, one of our foremost African-American scholars, is an apt biographer for Hughes (1902-67), our greatest black poet. I, Too, Sing America (volume 1) covers the years during which Hughes produced his best work and was most politically active; I Dream a World (volume 2) chronicles his artistic decline due to overwork in= response to perpetual financial difficulties. Both volumes are psychologically astute, critically penetrating and masterful in their intermingling of Hughes' story with a chronicle of the enormous changes that took place in black America during his lifetime.
Product Description:
February 1, 2002 marks the 100th birthday of Langston Hughes. To commemorate the centennial of his birth, Arnold Rampersad has contributed new Afterwords to both volumes of his highly-praised biography of this most extraordinary and prolific American writer.
In young adulthood Hughes possessed a nomadic but dedicated spirit that led him from Mexico to Africa and the Soviet Union to Japan, and countless other stops around the globe. Associating with political activists, patrons, and fellow artists, and drawing inspiration from both Walt Whitman and the vibrant Afro-American culture, Hughes soon became the most original and revered of black poets. In the first volume's Afterword, Rampersad looks back at the significant early works Hughes produced, the genres he explored, and offers a new perspective on Hughes's lasting literary influence.
Exhaustively researched in archival collections throughout the country, especially in the Langston Hughes papers at Yale University's Beinecke Library, and featuring fifty illustrations per volume, this anniversary edition will offer a new generation of readers entrance to the life and mind of one of the twentieth century's greatest artists.
Average Rating: 
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I learned that research can be used as a blessing and a way of connecting readers to life sustaining knowledge. Thank you Professor Rampersad for writing this book! Now I know what a great American Langston Hughes was and the amount of influence he had over other writers such as Alice Walker, Ralph Ellison, and Arna Bontemps. Hughes was a world traveler and radical activist in addition to being a innovative writer of poems, essays, plays, and fiction. I cannot wait to read Volume II.
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The man that poetry made stands luminous
on the broken corners of history's suicidal cravings,
he watches splashing in the street
birds cleaning their feathers inside
the crystal flow of words he gave them,
he is a vintage wine now,
traveling with ease over the tongues
of other people's intentions,
he is a quilt
made of one billion black hands
spread like guarantees from a single living God
over the heads of the ... Read More
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Long before the advent of the 1960's motto of black pride and black beauty, there was Langston Hughes who championed and celebrated black pride and black beauty, both African and black American, at the height racial inequality in the United States.
The two definitive biographies of Langston Hughes are written by Faith Berry, LANGSTON HUGHES: BEFORE AND BEYOND HARLEM, and, the two by Arnold Rampersad's, THE LIFE OF LANGSTON HUGHES VOLS. 1 AND 2. For those able to do it, I would recommend ... Read More
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"'The Africans looked at me and would not believe I was a Negro': ...
`You - white man'," they said. Repudiating the idea that he was not one of them,
Hughes asserted "the unity of blacks everywhere." Hughes' choice to embrace
his African-American heritage is a major theme of Rampersad's biography.
Hughes rejected his father's path and the chance to pass, to escape prejudice
and win easy acceptance as a member of Mexican society. Poetic inspiration
came from Harlem, ... Read More
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This is the most complete writing on Hughes' life. Beautifully written yet very thorough. Arnold Rampersad is probably the most talented biographer alive.
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Dewey Decimal Number: 818.5209
EAN: 9780195146424
Edition: 2
ISBN: 0195146425
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 528
Publication Date: January 10, 2002
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA