Absolutely beautiful. ( )

audiosync free title 2023 (~8 hrs) "sandy-haired" Black boy grows up under the care of his grandmother in small-town Kansas (published in 1930).

Vocal cadences make for a pleasant listening experience, though alternating loud and soft voices make it less ideal for going to sleep. Excellent storytelling through dialogue and descriptive passages. ( )

This well-written book is said to be Hughes bildungsroman, which of course made it sadder than it already was. It presented the lives of many working class Blacks living mostly in Kansas. Sandy begins as a child and at the end is possibly about to begin high school. He has always accepted much responsibility and cared about many people, especially his diverse family. He is often treated kindly, but he is also discriminated against due only to the fact that he is Black and that systemic racism is such a part of the United States. His personality is such that he is able to laugh at times when I expect he was really very hurt or disappointed. That is the derivation of the title. This book was originally published in 1930, and these problems are unfortunately still prevalent today. ( )

It seems that we're in Kansas, in an African American community, in 1912 and beyond.

Whenever I go on vacation, I try to read some books by
African American authors. I think I only managed this one this year. The issue for me, is that I can't possibly understand other people, unless I learn about them by reading about their lives (African Americans, Japanese, Chinese, etc.). This book, although written some 87 years ago, is still a fresh lens to help us privileged, comfortably well-off white folks see ourselves as others see us; others in this case, being African Americans.

An additional interesting thing about this book is that it follows the life of a young, African American boy who lived in Kansas, from about 1912 to 1918 or so. The boy was something like 7 to 14 over this period (fuzzy math). My mother was a young girl growing up in Kansas at the same time, although she was a bit younger. So, it's interesting to read about young African American children in Kansas and to compare it with my mother's stories of growing up.

Langston Hughes was best known as a top notch poet. But this book shows that he's also a rather good novelist. The writing is wonderful.
( )

Still brilliant after all these years, and gives more insight into the lives of black people back then (1930s) than most other books of this kind. ( )