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Chapter 10 - Langston Hughes and the 1930s: From Harlem to the USSR

from Part IV - International, Black, and Radical Visions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2022

Eve Dunbar
Affiliation:
Vassar College, New York
Ayesha K. Hardison
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
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Summary

This chapter argues that the articles, poems, interviews, essays, and memoirs that emerged from Hughes’s eighteen months in the USSR reflect a distinct literary-mobility paradigm through which he critiques American race, gender, politics, justice, capitalism, and power relationships, through the rhetorical device of travel writing. Traveling to the USSR in 1932 with a group of African American writers, actors, and activists who had been invited to make a film about race in America, Hughes was eager to participate in the socialist aesthetic agenda. Despite his initial enthusiasm, Hughes soon became disillusioned with the Soviet system.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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