The first volume of Arnold Rampersad's The Life of Langston Hughes received
enormous praise. Michael Harper hailed it in The Boston Globe as "an exquisite
orchestration of the fully lived life"; Alice Walker called it "a book I have
waited half a lifetime for"; and John Gross declared in The New York Times that
"Rampersad leaves] you eager to see what he makes of the rest of the story." Now
we have just that: the second and final volume of Rampersad's epic biography of
black America's most original and beloved poet.
Rampersad traces Hughes' life from the humiliations of 1940-41, with his career
in jeopardy, to his