Black Misery - Softcover

Hughes, Langston

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195142985 ISBN 13: 9780195142983

Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr, 2001

Synopsis

Black Misery was first published in 1969, but the gentle, funny, and sometimes melancholy words of Langston Hughes still cause a blink of recognition. After 25 years, it remains relevant in our own time. As you turn the pages you may say, "I remember feeling like that!" You may say, "I feel like that now."
As you look at Arouni's black and white illustrations and read the short but powerful one sentence captions, you feel the predicament of a black child adjusting to the new world of integration of the 1960s. You feel the mix of hope and dismay that characterized the decade.
Langston Hughes was a writer who often made his readers ask hard questions about life. InBlack Misery he wrote about prejudice and indifference, but he wrote with humor and compassion. Today--just as we did 25 years ago-we smile and even laugh, and we also understand that some things are more than hard, are more than sad. They are pure misery.
Black Misery was the last book that Langston Hughes wrote. He died in May 1967, while working on the manuscript.

About this title

Synopsis:

Publisher Paul Eriksson commissioned Langston Hughes to write Black Misery in the late 1960s as a followup to a successful humorous children's series by Sue Heller called "Misery Is...". Hughes's contribution was at once humorous and bitter. As a reflection of the militancy of the 1960s it spoke to adults of the difficult times in which they lived. But children saw it as a funny examination of growing up they could recognize and apppreciate. The short but powerful one-sentence captions, illustrated by Arouni's black and white drawings, tell of the predicament of a black child adjusting to the new world of integration of the 1960s. The mix of hope and dismay that characterized that decade is still real and immediate after 25 years. This edition also includes an introduction by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, and an afterword by Professor Robert G. O'Mealley of Columbia University.

About the Author:

Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, in 1902. He traveled all over the world--to Europe, Africa, Mexico, the Soviet Union--but his heart and home were in Harlem, where he was one of the most versatile writers of the artistic movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. Though known primarily as a poet, Hughes also wrote plays, essays, novels, short stories, and books for children. His writing is characterized by simplicity and realism and, as he once said, "people up today and down tomorrow, working this week and fired the next, beaten and baffled, but determined not to be wholly beaten."

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0195142985
• ISBN 13: 9780195142983
• Binding: Paperback
• Illustrator: Arouni