{"product_id":"big-sea-book-langston-hughes-9780938410331","title":"The Big Sea","description":"\u003cp\u003eLangston Hughes was among the Harlem Renaissance authors who traveled widely during the 1920s. In the first volume of his autobiography, \u003ci\u003eThe Big Sea, \u003c\/i\u003e covering the years through 1931, Hughes offers recollections of his childhood in Kansas, his high school years in Cleveland, his sojourn with his father in Mexico, and his initial reactions to New York City and Harlem.\u003c\/p\u003e Commentaries on the Black Renaissance in Harlem and Washington, D.C., are intertwined with recollections of his student years at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, his travels through the South, and his association as a younger generation poet with the New York and Harlem literary establishment represented by the magazines \u003ci\u003eCrisis\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eOpportunity.\u003c\/i\u003e Personal memories of Jessie Fauset, Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, W. E. B. Du Bois, Wallace Thurman, Alain Locke, Carter G. Woodson, Vachel Lindsay, A'Lelia Walker, and others are augmented by allusions to such celebrities as Duke Ellington, Florence Mills, Eubie Blake, Florence Embry, Josephine Baker, Bert Williams, Theodore Dreiser, Ethel Barrymore, and Bessie Smith. Hughes addresses such controversial issues as his literary and personal disagreements with Zora Neale Hurston over their play \u003ci\u003eMule Bone, \u003c\/i\u003e Carl Van Vechten's problematic novel \u003ci\u003eNigger Heaven, \u003c\/i\u003e racial matters at Lincoln University, the Jim Crow laws in the South, and the failures of white patronage. Furthermore, Hughes refers to the sources of a blues poetry aesthetic, his visit to Cuba, and the struggle to complete his first novel, \u003ci\u003eNot without Laughter.\u003c\/i\u003e A rare autobiographical presentation of the Harlem Renaissance from the perspective of an insider, \u003ci\u003eThe Big Sea\u003c\/i\u003e is a veritable catalog of notables. In addition, it offers a black perspective on the expatriate life in Europe during the Jazz Age.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50159787376913,"sku":"CIN0938410334VG","price":6.27,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50412639322385,"sku":"CIN0938410334A","price":5.98,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0938410334.jpg?v=1751266383","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/products\/big-sea-book-langston-hughes-9780938410331","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}