Not Without Laughter

By Langston Hughes

Deal Ends: Wed 11th February

In an "eye-opening portrait of the artist as a young black man in the Midwest," the Harlem Renaissance poet made his fiction debut with this 1930 novel ( A. Scott Berg, The New York Times Book Review ). A moving depiction of African American family life, Not Without Laughter is the coming-of-age story of Sandy Rogers as he navigates growing up in a racially divided small town in Kansas. With a mother who works as a housekeeper for a rich white family and a musician father who travels the country in search of work, Sandy's family struggles against poverty and discrimination in a novel that "moves as swiftly as a jazz rhythm" ( The New York Times ), rendering an indelible portrait of the Black experience in America in the years leading up to World War I. "Langston Hughes is a titanic figure in 20th century American literature. . . . A powerful interpreter of the American experience." — The Philadelphia Inquirer