Oct 17, 2023·edited Oct 17, 2023Liked by Noah Berlatsky
This summer I found a book by Langston Hughes at a garage sale in Des Moines -- Famous Negro Heroes of America (1958) -- it was beyond fascinating. I wrote a little review of it on Amazon (even tho I bought it at a garage sale, that's the place I figured most people looking for the book would be likely to see the review), but you're making me want to also share it here, so that those who love Hughes's poetry can try to find a copy:
Top review from the United States
A. Letter
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and Entertaining
Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2023
I found this book at a yard sale and bought it because I was surprised to learn that Langston Hughes wrote such a book: a selection of short, entertainingly-written biographies of Black American heroes for young people. "Heroes" should perhaps be in quotes just because the meaning of the word has changed significantly since 1958 when this book was published. Several of the people whose lives are told in this book would be unlikely to be included in a similar book today -- they were recent war heroes of the recent wars. The standard by which these heroes are measured is especially military / martial -- these are people who kill and outwit the enemy. These are biographies of mostly-men who regard "Eskimos" and Mexicans as less-than-human alongside their white peers and excel at exploitative business practices, hunting animals to near-extinction, and who will endure a year of shunning, or kill a sled dog a day to feed the other sled dogs, only to eat the last sled dogs themselves. In other words, the violent and unfeeling brand of "manly" that was current in the 1950s is celebrated in Hughes' biographies, and his primary innovation is making sure these values shown to be shared by the Black Americans he features.
There are two women included, Harriett Tubman and Ida B. Wells. Tubman is, in Hughes' telling, a skilled warrior with these same martial talents. Wells is dainty and beautiful: "a pretty young woman who looked too fragile to lift anything heavier than a pen in self-defense."
The men in the book are (with Hughes' subheadings): Esteban, discoverer of Arizona, Crispus Attucks, martyr for American independence, Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, founder of Chicago, Paul Cuffe, seaman and colonizer, Gabriel Prosser, freedom seeker, James P. Beckwourth, frontiersman, Frederick Douglass, abolitionist, Robert Smalls, patriot, Charles Young, West Pointer, Matthew A. Henson, Explorer, Hugh N. Mulzac, master mariner, Henry Johnson, a gallant soldier, Dorie Miller, a hero of Pearl Harbor, Benjamin O. Davis Jr., General of the Air Force.
It's interesting to me that Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey are both referenced several times in the book in different sections, but neither is biographied.
It's also interesting that Tuskegee is mentioned several times very approvingly. The scandal of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments would not come out until 1972, but the experiments were begun in 1932 -- so this book was published while the atrocity was on-going. It's sad to realize that this shining star of Black American pride -- a word, Tuskegee, that stood for Black greatness -- would be so thoroughly dimmed and dirtied by later revelations.
This is a well-written and highly engaging book that would still be of interest to young people, in my opinion, although not just as a celebration of Black American heroicism, but also as an example of how History works -- how values and meaning can change over time, yet certain universals keep us thrilled to the pages. I learned from this book, and I enjoyed it.
Thanks! I'm not surprised Hughes wrote such a thing—he wrote *a lot* in just about every genre, and it totally makes sense he'd be writing a children's book focused on showing that Black people could be heroic in fairly conventional ways.
This summer I found a book by Langston Hughes at a garage sale in Des Moines -- Famous Negro Heroes of America (1958) -- it was beyond fascinating. I wrote a little review of it on Amazon (even tho I bought it at a garage sale, that's the place I figured most people looking for the book would be likely to see the review), but you're making me want to also share it here, so that those who love Hughes's poetry can try to find a copy:
Top review from the United States
A. Letter
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and Entertaining
Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2023
I found this book at a yard sale and bought it because I was surprised to learn that Langston Hughes wrote such a book: a selection of short, entertainingly-written biographies of Black American heroes for young people. "Heroes" should perhaps be in quotes just because the meaning of the word has changed significantly since 1958 when this book was published. Several of the people whose lives are told in this book would be unlikely to be included in a similar book today -- they were recent war heroes of the recent wars. The standard by which these heroes are measured is especially military / martial -- these are people who kill and outwit the enemy. These are biographies of mostly-men who regard "Eskimos" and Mexicans as less-than-human alongside their white peers and excel at exploitative business practices, hunting animals to near-extinction, and who will endure a year of shunning, or kill a sled dog a day to feed the other sled dogs, only to eat the last sled dogs themselves. In other words, the violent and unfeeling brand of "manly" that was current in the 1950s is celebrated in Hughes' biographies, and his primary innovation is making sure these values shown to be shared by the Black Americans he features.
There are two women included, Harriett Tubman and Ida B. Wells. Tubman is, in Hughes' telling, a skilled warrior with these same martial talents. Wells is dainty and beautiful: "a pretty young woman who looked too fragile to lift anything heavier than a pen in self-defense."
The men in the book are (with Hughes' subheadings): Esteban, discoverer of Arizona, Crispus Attucks, martyr for American independence, Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, founder of Chicago, Paul Cuffe, seaman and colonizer, Gabriel Prosser, freedom seeker, James P. Beckwourth, frontiersman, Frederick Douglass, abolitionist, Robert Smalls, patriot, Charles Young, West Pointer, Matthew A. Henson, Explorer, Hugh N. Mulzac, master mariner, Henry Johnson, a gallant soldier, Dorie Miller, a hero of Pearl Harbor, Benjamin O. Davis Jr., General of the Air Force.
It's interesting to me that Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey are both referenced several times in the book in different sections, but neither is biographied.
It's also interesting that Tuskegee is mentioned several times very approvingly. The scandal of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments would not come out until 1972, but the experiments were begun in 1932 -- so this book was published while the atrocity was on-going. It's sad to realize that this shining star of Black American pride -- a word, Tuskegee, that stood for Black greatness -- would be so thoroughly dimmed and dirtied by later revelations.
This is a well-written and highly engaging book that would still be of interest to young people, in my opinion, although not just as a celebration of Black American heroicism, but also as an example of how History works -- how values and meaning can change over time, yet certain universals keep us thrilled to the pages. I learned from this book, and I enjoyed it.
Thanks! I'm not surprised Hughes wrote such a thing—he wrote *a lot* in just about every genre, and it totally makes sense he'd be writing a children's book focused on showing that Black people could be heroic in fairly conventional ways.
Absolutely -- I can't emphasize how well-written it is, tho: I couldn't put it down, an absolutely page-turner.
Those final lines from English B have stayed with me since I read them. Great poem.
Really fantastic piece (and a killer Langston Hughes poem -- I hadn't read that before and it's jaw-dropping good).
he's so good!