Not Without Laughter (Herald Classics)
Product details
- ISBN 9781454964797
- Weight: 420g
- Dimensions: 132 x 208mm
- Publication Date: 05 Mar 2026
- Publisher: Union Square & Co.
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Langston Hughes's debut novel, a moving portrait of African American family life in 1930s Kansas, newly reissued for Union Square & Co.'s Herald Classics line.
Originally published in 1930, Not Without Laughter follows Sandy Rogers as a boy living in rural Kansas to his arrival in Chicago as a young man, set against a backdrop of poverty, racial segregation, and the onset of World War I. Orbiting Sandy are a host of vividly realized family members, including his mother Annjee, a housekeeper for a wealthy white family; his irresponsible father Jimboy, who plays guitar and is constantly in search of work; his aunts, blues-singing Aunt Harriet and social-climbing Aunt Tempy; and his pious, strong-willed grandmother Hager, who holds the generations together.
Partly inspired by Langston Hughes's early life in the Midwest, Not Without Laughter is the debut novel of the literary giant, a sweeping and elegiac family drama that traces Black life in the early twentieth century, an important setting in the history of a racially divided America.
