Racism is a thread running though Not Without Laughter. Sandy and a few black children are seated in their classroom (by a white teacher) only after the white children have taken their seats in alphabetical order. One of the children observes, “My name is Sadie Butler and she’s put me behind the Z . . .” Sandy nods, and the realization “made him feel like crying.” Later on, the mother of a black girl who has failed the grade comes to school, protesting “Look at ma chile settin’ back behind all de white ones . . . An’ me payin’ as much taxes as anybody! You treat us colored folks like we ain’t citizerzens.”

In addition to racism, Sandy has to face another disturbing reality—eager to show his new schoolbooks to his father, he discovers that Jimboy has left. Sandy’s grandmother, determined to make an “edicated man” out of her grandson, proclaims that he will become “another Booker T. Washington.” The apparent differences between the whites and blacks in Sandy’s experience lead him to wonder whether he would ever “have a big house with electric lights in it . . . it was mostly white people who had such fine things, and they were mean to colored.... Some white folks were nice, though.” The uncertainty of his future weighs on him, especially when his mother leaves to join Jimboy, leaving the boy with his grandmother. Supported by her love, Sandy ventures out into the world, taking a job in a barbershop and then at a hotel, cleaning and shining shoes. Inflamed by a customer’s racism, he flees the hotel.

After his grandmother’s death, Sandy lives with his aunt, Tempy, whose attempts to distance herself from her small-town black roots leads her to reject “big pots of black-eyed peas” in favor of recipes from The Ladies’ Home Journal, as well as demanding that Sandy “talk like a gentleman.” However, in the home of the social-climbing Tempy, Sandy discovers a treasure trove of literature, which he eagerly consumes. Life blossoms for Sandy, who, as he excels in school, grows both in stature and self-confidence. Yet, overwhelmed by the conflicting lessons of his impoverished childhood with Aunt Hager, and his more recent life with Tempy, Sandy suddenly doubts himself. But after joining his mother in Chicago, though, Sandy realizes that he has been traveling in the right direction.

Langston Hughes’s true power as a poet shines through Not Without Laughter, especially in the chapter “Dance.” In this kinetic, extended riff—prompted by Sandy’s visit to a dance hall—Hughes, mingling bluesy lyrics with the “Whaw-whaw-whaw” of the brassy coronet, plunges the boy into a stew of pulsing rhythms that convey the “drowsy flow of sound” of the St. Louis Blues. Sandy literally disappears into the wailing sounds, only to be pulled out by his frantic aunt. At the conclusion of the novel, Sandy and Annjee happen upon a “little Southern church,” tucked away in the big city of Chicago. The rolling sounds bring back memories of Stanton, Kansas, to Sandy, and he is buoyed by the stirring sound of gospel, “vibrant and steady like a stream of living faith,” connecting him to his past as he faces the future.