Thursday, August 1, 2019

Not without Laughter


In my American Literature class, we had to read some poetry from Langston Hughes.  I'm not the best at understanding poetry but Hughes was easy to read and very good.  When I found out he wrote novels too I had to read one.  This is his first.  It's a coming of age story about a boy named Sandy, probably semi-autobiographical.  It's about a boy whose father is a drifter and his grandmother who mostly takes care of him. The grandmother wants him to become a somebody like Booker T. Washington.  She has a lot of aspirations for this boy.  His aunt Harriet takes a shady road but ends up becoming a successful singer.  Along the way, the boy gets a job at a hotel and as a shoeshine boy.    I've been reading books from the Harlem Renaissance lately.  Why didn't I read books like this in high school?  Why wasn't I introduced to the movement till college?  But then I did go to a lackluster school so that might have something to do with it. 3.5/5   

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