Before & Beyond Harlem: Biography of Langston Hughes

The distinguishing feature of Faith Berry's LANGSTON HUGHES: BEFORE AND BEYOND HARLEM is the brevity of the text when compared to the extremely detailed biographies of THE LIFE OF LANGSTON HUGHES 1 & 2 by Arnold Rampersad. It should be noted that Ms. Berry was not given full access to the Hughes Papers on deposit at Yale. Rather, she was given permission to only view those pages specifically asked for from the executors under the tutelage of the late George Bass. As a result and under sometimes trying circumstances, Berry labored with more difficulty to put together a biography that is as definitive as Rampersad's, but doesn't come close to being rich in the prized details that show Hughes as being the complicated man that he was barring the lonliness and unimpeachable black pride that accompanied him to the end of his life. Rampersad's two biographies of Hughes surpasses Berry's because he had full access to the Hughes Papers. This access allowed him to offert the read a three diminsional picture of Hughes revealing a man who had his faults in character along with his triumphs in character. Berry doesn't quite manage to break the exterior of Hughes as good as Rampersad. The real fulcrum on which Berry's biography hangs is its unbridled absence of prejudice in acknowledging Hughes being an understandably closeted black gay man. Not the first to do this, Berry offers the more likely true conjecture that the significant romantic relationship in Hughes' life (the F.S. dedication of one of Hughes' poems) was Ferdinand Smith of Jamaica, a merchant sailor who encouraged Hughes to go to sea which led to his famous travels. Hughes corresponded with Smith up until 1961 when Smith died in Jamaica. Of course, this information Berry mentions in her notes rather than include it in the text of her biography. To her discredit, she chooses to mention and then deny a rumor that Hughes and silent film actor Ramon Novarro were lovers in the body of the biography. Novarro was unjustly and inaccurately linked to every man he knew after his tragic death--to the dismay of his biographers. To her credit, she does reveal that the Caribbian traveling companion of Hughes, Zell Ingram, was a gay man who married and divorced later in his life. Rampersad does not even identify Ingram as gay and is to dismissive of other black gay men in Hughes's life. Rampersad, to his credit, does not engage in rumors. Moreover, Rampersad's more detailed research led him to the astonishing and often ignored admission that Hughes preferred black men, especially those of dark complexion. As evidence by his life and body of work, Hughes showed little interest in white men as objects of desire ( the complete polar opposite of Richard Bruce Nugent who was "somewhat" openly gay, even while married, and showed a patent interest in white men in his life and work excluding SMOKE, LILLIES, AND JADE). Critics of Rampersad have failed to note this contradiction in Rampersad's V

This a a book that has works by Langston Hughes that perhaps your pat Black History month or American Literature classes never mentioned. Excellent work by a brilliant author.