Langston Hughes was one of the most important American writers of his generation, and one of the most versatile, producing poetry, fiction, drama, and autobiography. In this innovative study, R. Baxter Miller explores Hughes's life and art to enlarge our appreciation of his contribution to American letters. Arguing that readers often miss the complexity of Hughes's work because of its seeming accessibility, Miller begins with a discussion of the writer's auto-biography, an important yet hitherto neglected key to his imagination. Moving on to consider the subtle resonances of his life in the varied genres over which his imagination "wandered," Miller finds a constant symbiotic bond between the historical and the lyrical. The range of Hughes's artistic vision is revealed in his depiction of Black women, his political stance, his lyric and tragi-comic modes. This is one of the first studies to apply recent methods of literary analysis, including formalist, structuralist, and semiotic criticism, to the work of a Black American writer. Miller not only affirms in Hughes's work the peculiar qualities of Black American culture but provides a unifying conception of his art and identifies the primary metaphors lying at its heart. Here is a fresh and coherent reading of the work of one of the twentieth century's greatest voices, a reinterpretation that renews our appreciation not only of Black American text and heritage but of the literary imagination itself.

For Black writers, what is tradition? What does it mean to them that Western humanism has excluded Black culture? Seven noted Black writers and critics take up these and other questions in this collection of original essays, attempting to redefine humanism from a Black perspective, to free it from ethnocentrism, and to enlarge its cultural base. Contributors: Richard K. Barksdale, Alice Childress, Chester J. Fontenot, Michael S. Harper, Trudier Harris, George E. Kent, R. Baxter Miller

Within a rich cultural and political context, Miller proposes that as the centuries turned and the nation became more diverse, the great Chicago Renaissances-especially the literary and cultural ones-never really ended. The nation's cities simply became more richly complexioned and culturally nuanced. Hence, the great Popular and Cultural Fronts of the thirties resurfaced as the innovative Black Arts Movement of the late sixties and early seventies. By the last third of the Twentieth Century, Chicago epitomized a dynamism among several of the most gifted African American writers in the nation's history. In addition to Gwendolyn Brooks and Richard Wright, these figures included Lorraine Hansberry, and, yes, the nearly forgotten Ronald L. Fair. As a whole, the four recentered the locus of literary artistry in the United States. Though the great trace of African American literary imagination had nearly always led through the Harlem Renaissance of 1920s New York, a new trajectory took a decisive turn toward the Great Lakes. It has taken until the early decades of the 21st century to realize that the cultural map of the last hundred years had already changed. This book, a startling epiphany of post-modern American culture, will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in national politics and history as well as bold innovations in literary form.

Written by a lifelong champion of civil rights, this is the story of Kenneth Harper, a young black physician who, after having studied in the North in the early part of the twentieth century, returns to his hometown of Central City in South Georgia to practice medicine. Believing the days of oppression for blacks in the South were waning, Harper finds all too soon that the roots of intolerance grow deep. As he becomes increasingly aware of the ways in which the black community remains enslaved, Harper helps local sharecroppers organize a cooperative society to share in the economic freedom traditionally reserved for white landowners. The Ku Klux Klan is quickly rallied into action, and Harper finds himself in a violent and vengeful battle with the Klan. Amid the story's tragedy and violence, Walter White reflects the complex nuances of humanity within white and black communities in conflict.