Langston Hughes: Coming of Age In America

Most know Langston Hughes as a poet, but those of you who have not read his prose are missing something. My North-Carolina-born-and-raised mother would easily recognize the world of Langston Hughes's first novel, Not Without Laughter, published in 1930. Yet his fictional setting is based on Lawrence, Kansas, just prior to World War I, and hers was Piedmont North Carolina just after it.


The similarities in black-white relationships are also remarkable, the only exception being Kansas's integrated schools. Not only that, but many of Hughes's believable and well-developed characters, with all their strengths and weaknesses, even seem to share characteristics with whites straight out of Faulkner's novels of the same time period.

The protagonist's aunt runs away with a traveling carnival and follows the same trajectory as Caddy in The Sound and the Fury. Another aunt is so desirous of social status that she becomes an Episcopalian and refuses to eat watermelon; think Snopes.

Are these similarities because it IS the same time period, even if Faulkner writes of northern Mississippi? Or because Hughes wished to reach a white audience as well as a black one with this first novel? Or maybe both of them are writing stories that are identified as black or white but simply mirror the human condition of the time.

I'd like to believe the latter.


Strangely enough, Hughes's characters also mirror the human condition of the 21st century. But then a good novel never loses its relevance.

Arthur Conan Doyle Does Mormonism

What could be more exotic for the British reading public than the Mormons contained in Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet, the first of the famous series with Sherlock Holmes? And what American would predict that Mormons would figure prominently in this work?

Published in 1887 and supposedly taking place in 1881, this portrait of Mormons is a bloody and ruthless one. In fact, it reminds me of recent fictional portraits of wild-eyed evangelical sects or cults, Jim Jones, or the shootout at Waco. The long second section is a flashback to the American West providing a background to two murders committed in London that seems to justify killing exaggeratedly wild-eyed and vindictive polygamists--to the point that Holmes in later years wrote an apology to the Church of the Latter Day Saints.

Polls suggest that some Americans would never vote for a Mormon. According to a column by commentator Mark Shields,

In 2006, the Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times Poll asked, "Just thinking about a candidates' religion, could you vote for a (Jewish/Catholic/Mormon) for president, or not?" Fourteen percent of registered voters admitted they could not vote for a Jewish nominee for the White House, and 9 percent revealed a similar objection to a Catholic. But a full 35 percent of registered voters said they "could not vote for a Mormon candidate."

Remarkable, really. I could understand if they said they couldn't vote for a Muslim, but a Mormon?

Is the sensationalism of 19th- and 20th-century novelists still affecting 21st-century Americans? Are the media somehow perpetuating stereotypes?

Can the national campaign of Mitt Romney overcome such prejudice? What about the high profile of Harry Reid? Does the public even realize he's a Mormon?

Again, the past isn't dead, is it?

Planting for the Future

About forty years ago a person I have never met planted these hydrangeas in my back yard. Ever since, despite a little benign neglect, they have bloomed profusely come rain or shine.

For most of what we planted forty years ago ourselves, we will never know what pleasure (or pain) it might be granting others today. And I'm not thinking just about plants!