Randal M. Jelks on "My America: Langston Hughes on Democracy"

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Best known as the leader of the Harlem Renaissance, the celebrated poet and writer Langston Hughes believed in the power of art as resistance. What can we learn from his works today?

Randal M. Jelks delivers this revelatory portrait of the celebrated poet, essayist, playwright, and American artist Langston Hughes. My America traces Hughes's journey from a child captivated by the wonder of Kansas City to cosmopolitan witness in Paris, New York, Mexico City, and Madrid. We encounter Hughes as a young man discovering the pulse of modern life in a world on the verge of exploding metaphorically and literally. His experiences informed his work and his thinking on art, democracy, and activism.

Langston Hughes is one of the few American writers who consistently wrote about democracy from a joyous perspective, and My America explores how his works speak to the political anxieties and crises we face today. Jelks deftly examines the themes in Hughes's work, including creative expression, communal dignity, class struggle, and human suffering and what they mean for our inner well-being as democratic persons and political participants.

With care and no-holds-barred insight, My America removes the veneer of respectability often placed on Hughes's work and life to reveal his political adeptness. In a world threatened by fascism, Hughes's writing wasn't afforded the luxury of subtlety. He made a spiritual and political decision to stand on the side of the oppressed. He believed art should be practiced for the sake of justice. And democracy can be practiced with joy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Randal Maurice Jelks, PhD, is a professor, a documentary producer, and the author of four books, including the award-winning Benjamin Elijah Mays: Schoolmaster of the Movement and, most recently, Letters to Martin: Meditations on Democracy in Black America. Jelks’s writings have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Review, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. He is coeditor of the academic journal American Studies.

Born in New Orleans, Jelks is a descendant of the Georgetown 272—enslaved persons sold to pay off Georgetown University’s debts. His Louisiana lineage traces back to the 1830s and 1840s through enslaved ancestors from Maryland and Virginia. Jelks is a graduate of the University of Michigan (BA in History), McCormick Theological Seminary (MDiv), and Michigan State University (PhD in Comparative Black Histories).

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