Not Without Laughter Herald Classics

<B>Langston Hughes's debut novel, a moving portrait of African American family life in 1930s Kansas, newly reissued for Union Square & Co.’s Herald Classics line.</B><BR/><BR/> Originally published in 1930, <I>Not Without Laughter</I> follows Sandy Rogers as a boy living in rural Kansas to his arrival in Chicago as a young man, set against a backdrop of poverty, racial segregation, and the onset of World War I. Orbiting Sandy are a host of vividly realized family members, including his mother Annjee, a housekeeper for a wealthy white family; his irresponsible father Jimboy, who plays guitar and is constantly in search of work; his aunts, blues-singing Aunt Harriet and social-climbing Aunt Tempy; and his pious, strong-willed grandmother Hager, who holds the generations together.<BR/><BR/> Partly inspired by Langston Hughes’s early life in the Midwest, <I>Not Without Laughter</I> is the debut novel of the literary giant, a sweeping and elegiac family drama that traces Black life in the early twentieth century, an important setting in the history of a racially divided America. <BR/><BR/>