Introduction by Arnold Rampersad.
Langston Hughes, born in 1902, came of age early in the 1920s. In The Big Sea he recounts those memorable years in the two great playgrounds of the decade--Harlem and Paris. In Paris he was a cook and waiter in nightclubs. He knew the musicians and dancers, the drunks and dope fiends. In Harlem he was a rising young poet--at the center of the "Harlem Renaissance."
Arnold Rampersad writes in his incisive new introduction to The Big Sea, an American classic: "This is American writing at its best--simpler than Hemingway; as simple and direct as that of another Missouri-born writer...Mark Twain."
A beautiful, difficult, and moving story about a shy and abused Southern black woman's struggle to create an identity, a feeling of self-worth, and love.
(1)As a chronicler of the African American experience in fiction and as an incisive cultural commentator in her essays and lectures, Toni Morrison (b. 1931) is regarded as one of the nation's most distinguished novelists and intellectuals. Her novels are richly layered narratives that explore the meanings of tragedy and myth in individual lives. Morrison's perspectives on American life and culture, rendered with a deep understanding of the consequences of history and the power of art, are always compelling. Toni Morrison: Conversations includes interviews with the Nobel Laureate that bring into the foreground Morrison's comments on American literature and society, the academy, and her own work. She discusses growing up in Lorain, Ohio, her role as editor at Random House, the continuing evolution of her style, her teaching philosophy, and her most recent novels Jazz, Paradise, and Love. This volume includes interviews and profiles from the 1970s and 1980s that were not collected in Conversations with Toni Morrison (1993) and a rich collection of new interviews published together for the first time, including conversations with Paula Giddings, Salman Rushdie, Charlie Rose, and Elissa Schappell.
