This new collection of forty-seven stories written between 1919 and 1963— the most comprehensive available—showcases Langston Hughes's literary blossoming and the development of his personal and artistic concerns. Many of the stories assembled here have long been out of print, and others never before collected. These poignant, witty, angry, and deeply poetic stories demonstrate Hughes's uncanny gift for elucidating the most vexing questions of American race relations and human nature in general.

"Perhaps more than any other writer in American history, Hughes was able to capture 'the Harlemness of the American predicament' (to quote Ralph Ellison's wonderful phrase),in words that had the ring of truth not just in literary circles but in barbershops and beauty parlors of everyday Harlem itself."
—ROBERT G. O'MEALLY, NEW YORK NEWSDAY

"[Hughes's] fiction ... manifests his 'wonder at the world.' As these stories reveal, that wonder has lost little of its shine." —BROOKE HORVATH, THE CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER

"A good example of how Hughes attempted the balancing act of writing an engaged literary and genuinely popular literature that spoke for and of the everyday lives of African-Americans." —JAMES SMETHURST, CHICAGO TRIBUNE

CONTENTS
Editor's Preface (Akiba Sullivan Harper)
Introduction (Arnold Rampersad)
1. Bodies in the Moonlight
2. The Young Glory of Him
3. The Little Virgin
4. Luani of the Jungles
5. Slave on the Block
6. Cora Unashamed
7. The Blues I'm Playing
8. Why, You Reckon?
9. Little Old Spy
10. Spanish Blood
11. On the Road
12. Gumption
13. Professor
14. Trouble with the Angels
15. Tragedy at the Baths
16. Slice Him Down
17. African Morning
18. 'Tain't So
19. Heaven to Hell
20. Breakfast in Virginia
21. Saratoga Rain
22. Who's Passing for Who?
23. On the Way Home
24. Name in the Papers
25. Sailor Ashore
26. Something in Common
27. Mysterious Madame Shanghai
28. Never Room with a Couple
29. Powder-White Faces
30. Pushcart Man
31. Rouge High
32. Patron of the Arts
33. Thank You, M'am
34. Sorrow for a Midget
35. Blessed Assurance
36. Early Autumn
37. Fine Accommodations
38. The Gun
39. His Last Affair
40. No Place to Make Love
41. Rock, Church
APPENDIX: EARLY STORIES
42. Mary Winosky
43. Those Who Have no Turkey
44. Seventy-Five Dollars
45. The Childhood of Jimmy
Publication History of Hughes's Short Stories

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Cover photograph by Roy Decarava
Cover design by Michael Ian Kaye
Hill and Wang
A division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux