Like his most famous poems, Langston Hughes’s stories are messages from that “other” America, sharply etched vignettes of its daily life, cruelly accurate portrayals of black people colliding—sometimes humorously, more often tragically—with whites. Filled with mordant wit and human detail, whether his character is a poor black musician or wealthy whites who collect Negroes, The Ways of White Folks is unmistakably the work of not only a great poet, but also a shrewd and compelling storyteller.

“Within the range of these stories there is humor, pathos, terror, and satire. I suspect that Langston Hughes is revealing here that mysterious quality in writing that we call genius.”—Horace Gregory

Table of Contents
Cora Unashamed
Slave on the Block
Home
Passing
A Good Job Done
Rejuventation Through Joy
The Blues I'm Playing
Red-Headed Baby
Poor Little Black Fellow
Little Dog
Berry
Mother and Child
One Christmas Eve
Father and Son

 
Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, in 1902. After graduation from high school, he spent a year in Mexico with his father, then a year studying at Columbia University. His first poem in a nationally known magazine ws “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” which appeared in Crisis in 1921. In 1925, he was awared the First Prize for Poetry of the magazine Opportunity, the winning poem being “The Weary Blues,” which gave its title to his first book of poems, published in 1926. As a result of his poetry, Mr. Hughes received a scholarship at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where he earned his B.A. in 1929. In 1943, he was awarded an honorary Litt.D. by his alma mater; he has also been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (1935), a Rosenwald Fellowship (1940), and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Grant (1947). From 1926 until his death in 1967, Langston Hughes devoted his time to writing and lecturing. He wrote poetry, short stories, autobiography, song lyrics, essays, humor, and plays.