Langston Hughes' "Not Without Laughter"

Just recently I read the book "Not Without Laughter" by Langston Hughes (1902-1967). I bought it in the U.S. last year (possibly when we were in Memphis...) and most likely because I knew the name Langston Hughes but had never read anything by him. I think he's best known as a poet but this is a prose book – the story of a young boy, Sandy, and his life in a small Kansas town in the early 1900s. It is about family life, the racial prejudices of the time, poverty, work, music, education... in some ways a fairly straightforward coming-of-age novel (first published in 1930).

However although "Not Without Laughter" is a slim book (about 200 pages) I would have to say that it is, quite simply, one of the best books I have ever read. I would guess that a lot of the material is from Hughes' own life and yet it still feels very much like a fictional story. It is very moving and yet it isn't at all sentimental or cloying. It is beautifully, delicately written and yet it spreads its aim wide too (the reader witnesses many different points of view via Sandy, his hardworking Grandmother, his lovelorn mother, his upwardly mobile aunt, his downwardly mobile aunt, his various friends and employers...). And all this is encapsulated in such a small book – it's a real piece of work. I can't believe I've never come across it before.

It did make me wonder why some schools don't study this instead of the inevitable "To Kill a Mockingbird" (or at least as well as - they would make great companions for study)? Maybe I'm out-of-date (I hope so), maybe this is different in other countries... but when I did some teaching in England (not that long ago) it was still Lee's book that was high on the list and there was no sign of this one. Aged 15 or so (back in the early 1980s) I studied Harper Lee's classic (and loved it) but how much I would have loved to have read "Not Without Laughter" too. Whilst Lee's book has racial prejudices as a central theme (if in a southern town and set slightly later in the 1930s) all of the main characters are white whereas in "Not Without Laughter", instead of the black characters being bit parts ("Mockingbird's" accused Tom Robinson), they are centrestage. And "Not Without Laughter"s clever Sandy is every bit as a strong a child-narrator as clever Scout (even if the book does lack the high drama of "Mockingbird's" court case). So why is this book so little mentioned (over here anyway... is it better known in the US, American readers?). This is not to say that kids shouldn't study "To Kill a Mockingbird" (not at all) but just a wonder about balance, about how some writers and books get the label "classic" and read for ever whilst others get forgotten, overlooked, passed by.

Unless of course this is just my ignorance and everyone else knew this book but me. Is that the case?

Here's a bit from "Not Without Laughter" (from near the end as Sandy approaches adulthood):

"I don't blame him," thought Sandy. "Sometimes I hate white people, too, like Aunt Harrie used to say she did. Still, some of them are pretty decent – my English-teacher, and Mr. Prentiss where I work. Yet even Mr. Prentiss wouldn't give me a job clerking in his shop. All I can do there is run errands and scrub the floor when everybody else is gone. There's no advancement for colored fellows. If they start as porters, they stay porters for ever and they can't come up. Being colored is like being born in the basement of life, with the door to the light locked and barred - and the white folks live upstairs. They don't want us up there with them, even when we're respectable like Dr. Mitchell, or smart like Dr. Du Bois... And the guys like Jap Logan – well, Jap don't care anyway! Maybe it's best not to care, and stay poor and meek waiting for heaven like Aunt Hager did... But I don't want heaven! I want to live first!" Sandy thought. "I want to live!"

To finish off here is Hughes reading one of his poems: