"In 1932, along with a group of African American activists and writers including novelist Dorothy West, Langston Hughes journeyed to the Soviet Union. Veering off from the “official” trip, Hughes met Arthur Koestler before venturing on to an extended journey through the newly formed republics of Central Asia. While Hughes’ readers may be familiar with his A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia, this chapbook makes available previously unpublished material drawn from Hughes’ notebooks, photographs, and collaborative translation projects with Uzbek poets. Just as his own work is being translated into Uzbek, Hughes—ever the participant—collaborates with his peer poets in the region to produce texts published in this collection for the first time. Finally, Hughes’ acuity of vision extends to his photographs appearing here, scenes of workers in the cotton fields of Central Asia that stand in stark contrast to official depictions of the time. Complementing The Selected Letters of Langston Hughes (2015) and a reprint of the 1926 edition of The Weary Blues, Langston Hughes: Poems, Photos & Notebooks from Turkestan reveals yet another aspect of the ever-expanding universe of one of the greatest American writers."--Publisher's website (viewed 05/07/2015).
No posts about this book yet. Be the first in the app!
