A Book Review: The Ways of White Folks by Langston Hughes

I picked this surprising book up at a thrift store about a month ago. I thought I’d read one story a day for two weeks. When I read the first story, I had to read the next one. I got through almost half the book before realizing how late it was. This happened each time I picked up the book. I finished it in about three days. If wanted to I could have read it in one sitting.

I’m glad I didn’t.

Poetry

Like most of us in the U.S., I heard about Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes in school. The first one I remember reading was “Harlem.”

I didn’t know he wrote other things, too

It was years later, as an adult, that I read his great poem “America.” By that time I was fully aware of what it really meant. I understood Jim Crow America better than high school me, partly because I had gotten older but mostly because I am a voracious reader and got lucky in my college American History classes.

I had professors who didn’t pull punches about what was wrong with America. That was the first I learned about the WWII internment camps we had here for German and Japanese Americans. I only learned about the ones for Italian-Americans in the past decade — and that was only because a Canadian television show called “Bomb Girls” caused me to do a little further research.

I don’t remember learning that Langston Hughes wrote short stories or essays or anything else. In college, I read Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northrup. Later I read Beloved by Toni Morrison. One memoir, one fiction, both revealing the horrors of slavery. I read many others, of course, both as assignments and on my own, but never once did I come across the non-poetic works of Langston Hughes.

Then I found this book.

The Review Part of this Story

The reason I’m glad I didn’t finish this book quickly is that it really needs to be ingested slowly. Each story must be understood beyond the mechanics of the words. Each story must be felt and cogitated upon. Each story must be remembered.

Hughes published this book in 1933. These are stories of fiction, but the overarching theme of Jim Crow America and the treatment of Blacks in the United States is the absolute truth. It is the truth told with raw honesty. This is an important book that I believe should be read by every American of every heritage.

I don’t want to tell you any of these tales. I want you to read them if you never have, especially if you are white. Please. Find the book at your favorite bookstore. I promise you will be heartbroken. More importantly, you will learn something. You will be changed.