Not Without Laughter, Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes (1901-1967) was one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Not Without Laughter (1930) was his first novel – I think he may be better known for his poetry, short stories and drama, but this is my introduction to his work – and it describes a young boy growing up in his grandmother’s house, as Hughes did in his grandmother’s house in Lawrence, Kansas, in the years before WWI.

I will deal more with the Harlem Renaissance, known at the time as the New Negro Movement, as I learn more about it.

.. with the Harlem Renaissance came a sense of acceptance for African American writers; as Langston Hughes put it, with Harlem came the courage “to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame.” Alain Locke’s anthology The New Negro (1925) was considered the cornerstone of this cultural revolution. The anthology featured several African American writers and poets, from the well-known, such as Zora Neale Hurston and communists Langston Hughes and Claude McKay, to the lesser known, like the poet Anne Spencer.

wiki (17 Dec 2023)

One thing I want to get out of the way early is that this novel has very little of the poetry of say Hurston – first novel, Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934). It is a very straight, almost stereotypical, account of a poor Black boy, Sandy (for his hair), growing up in the mid-west, in the presumably fictional town of Stanton, Kansas, a little separated from the south, but still subject to much racism.

I don’t have much history of US writing, but it is possible Not Without Laughter was important as an early account of African-American life post-Emancipation (1863). It also gives along the way some glimpses into Hughes’ fusing of music, Blues of course, and writing into the Jazz Poetry for which I think he became well known.

He did a lazy sway. . . .
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!

Langston Hughes, from The Weary Blues (1925)

Sandy lives with his mother, Anjee, in the house of her mother, ‘Aunt Hager’, who had been born into slavery in the south, had come north after the Civil War, and who makes her living taking in washing for ‘white folks’. Anjee has a younger sister, Harriett, doing well in high school and an older sister, Tempy, who has married well, maintains her distance from her family, and insists that Blacks must model their lives on whites to earn acceptance.

Sandy’s father, Jimboy, is a guitar playing wanderer, who lives at Aunt Hager’s when he’s in Stanton, but mostly rides the rails, looking for work, looking to keep moving, only rarely writing home. Anjee works long hours for little money housekeeping for a white family, bringing home scraps of meals. Jimboy sometimes finds work in Stanton, but not for long. In the evenings, if he’s home, he sits out the back with his guitar, encouraging Harriett to sing and dance.

The music rose hoarse and wild:

I wonder where my easy rider’s gone?
He done left me, put ma new gold watch in pawn

It was Harriett’s voice in plaintive moan to the night sky. Jimboy had taught her that song, but a slight, clay-coloured brown boy … discovered its meaning to her. Puppy love, maybe, but it hurt when he went away, saying nothing.

Hughes quite often discusses gradations in colour, and whether lightness of colour made one, male or female, more attractive.

Harriett starts staying out late; runs away with a fair; comes home briefly then goes to live on the wrong side of the tracks, where she becomes ‘well known’; drops out of the story for a while, reappearing near the end as a rising success on the musical hall stage.

Sandy gets after-school jobs, graduates into high school, does well; gets a girl whom he treats with respect, more respect than she wanted he finds out eventually; moves on to sweeping up and shining shoes in a barbershop, to cleaning in a downmarket hotel, where he hears, and sees, more. Lives with, is hurt by, small town racism: forced to sit up the back in class, refused admission to shows, not sitting in white seats at the movies, casual abuse from drunks and all the rest of it. And still his grandmother preaches black and white can be friends, equals, even as whites must be called Miss, Mister.

Jimboy goes away, a letter comes from Toledo, then, months later from Chicago. Anjee goes to join him there, leaving Sandy with her mother, gets work, living in a single room with Jimboy until at the start of WWI he joins up and is soon in France, not writing.

Anjee is only able to send back very small sums for Sandy’s upkeep, Aunt Hager is getting frail; Sandy lives for a while with the childless Aunt Tempy but doesn’t easily bear her rules about behaving white. Anjee wants him with her in Chicago, working; Sandy wants to finish high school.

There’s a Tom Sawyer vibe to the story, especially early on, as Sandy mucks around with his mates, Ellie Mae next door, Buster, who can pass as white, Jim Lane, who is orphaned and tempts him downtown; but there is never that freedom you feel with Tom, freedom from the cares of poverty, freedom to wander the town (and the river).

Did I enjoy it? To be honest I rarely ‘enjoy’ stories. I love language, and the best writers deploy language in new and strange and wonderful ways; I am interested in character and relationship development (right down to soppy romance); but mostly, books like this are just another step in … whatever it is I read for.

Ok, it’s an interesting and well-written story. How’s that?

.

Langston Hughes, Not Without Laughter, first pub. 1930. This edition (pictured) Vintage, 2022. 274pp.

see also, Marcie, Buried in Print:
The Writing Life: Langston Hughes (1/4)
The Writing Life: Langston Hughes (2/4)
The Writing Life: Langston Hughes (3/4)
The Writing Life: Langston Hughes (4/4)