Not Without Laughter

DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

GENERAL EDITOR: MARY CAROLYN WALDREP
EDITOR OF THIS VOLUME: JANET BAINE KOPITO

Dedication

To

J. E. AND AMY SPINGARN

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2008, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published in 1930 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York. An introductory Note has been specially prepared for this edition.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hughes, Langston, 1902–1967.

Not without laughter / Langston Hughes.

p. cm.

9780486113906

1. African American boys—Fiction. 2. City and town life—Fiction. 3. Kansas—Fiction. 4. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

PS3515.U274N6 2007

813’.52—dc22

2007000743

Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation
45448702
www.doverpublications.com

Note

JAMES LANGSTON HUGHES was born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, His parents separated shortly after his birth, and Hughes moved to Kansas to live with his grandmother. Early on, his literary talent was evident: he was elected “class poet” in eighth grade, as well as in high school, and his poems and short stories were included in the high school magazine (which he edited). His poem “The Weary Blues” was a first-prize contest winner (1925), leading to a book contract with Alfred Knopf. Hughes became acquainted with members of the Harlem Renaissance—the African-American literary movement of the early twentieth century, which turned attention to, and invoked pride in, the lives of black Americans—such as Arna Bontemps and Zora Neale Hurston. In 1930, Knopf brought out Hughes’s novel Not Without Laughter. In the next few years, he published a poetry collection for young readers consisting of previously published works, The Dream Keeper (1932); a short story collection, The Ways of White Folks (1934), and a Broadway play, Mulatto (1935).

After winning a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship in 1935, Langston Hughes devoted himself to writing plays, as well as trying his hand at journalism, reporting on the Spanish Civil War in 1937. Knopf published his autobiography, The Big Sea, in 1940 (a second volume, I Wonder As I Wander, published by Rinehart, came out in 1956). Montage of a Dream Deferred (Henry Holt, 1951) presented poems about life in Harlem; it was followed by a short story collection, Laughing to Keep from Crying (Henry Holt) in 1952. Hughes also published juvenile works, operas, gospel musical plays (one of which—Tambourines to Glory—appeared in novel form in 1958), poetry anthologies, and works on various topics, including jazz, African-American life, and civil rights. Following an exceedingly prolific career, and a peripatetic lifestyle, Langston Hughes died in New York City in 1967 after complications from surgery.

In Not Without Laughter, Hughes presents a portrait of black life in small-town Kansas in the early 1900s. The novel, which he wrote while a student at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, holds up a mirror to the writer’s own youthful experiences through the character of Sandy Rogers. First glimpsed as a small boy clutching the apron of his grandmother, “Aunt” Hager, during a deadly cyclone, Sandy is viewed by his mother, Annjee, as an “infinitely lovable edition” of his father, Jimboy. Jimboy, however, is regarded as a layabout, more interested in pursuing a life as a musician than in settling down with a “real” job to support his family.

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.

Table of Contents

Title Page
Dedication
Copyright Page
Note
I. STORM
II. CONVERSATION
III. JIMBOY’S LETTER
IV. THURSDAY AFTERNOON
V. GUITAR
VI. WORK
VII. WHITE FOLKS
VIII. DANCE
IX. CARNIVAL
X. PUNISHMENT
XI. SCHOOL
XII. HARD WINTER
XIII. CHRISTMAS
XIV. RETURN
XV. ONE BY ONE
XVI. NOTHING BUT LOVE
XVII. BARBER-SHOP
XVIII. CHILDREN’S DAY
XIX. TEN DOLLARS AND COSTS
XX. HEY, BOY!
XXI. NOTE TO HARRIETT
XXII. BEYOND THE JORDAN
XXIII. TEMPY’S HOUSE
XXIV. A SHELF OF BOOKS
XXV. POOL HALL
XXVI. THE DOORS OF LIFE
XXVII. BEWARE OF WOMEN
XXVIII. CHICAGO
XXIX. ELEVATOR
XXX. PRINCESS OF THE BLUES

I. STORM

AUNT Hager Williams stood in her doorway and looked out at the sun. The western sky was a sulphurous yellow and the sun a red ball dropping slowly behind the trees and house-tops. Its setting left the rest of the heavens grey with clouds.

“Huh! A storm’s comin’,” said Aunt Hager aloud.

A pullet ran across the back yard and into a square-cut hole in an unpainted piano-box which served as the roosting-house. An old hen clucked her brood together and, with the tiny chicks, went into a small box beside the large one. The air was very still. Not a leaf stirred on the green apple-tree. Not a single closed flower of the morning-glories trembled on the back fence. The air was very still and yellow. Something sultry and oppressive made a small boy in the doorway stand closer to his grandmother, clutching her apron with his brown hands.

“Sho is a storm comin’,” said Aunt Hager.

“I hope mama gets home ’fore it rains,” remarked the brown child holding to the old woman’s apron. “Hope she gets home.”

“I does, too,” said Aunt Hager. “But I’s skeared she won’t.”

Just then great drops of water began to fall heavily into the back yard, pounding up little clouds of dust where each drop struck the earth. For a few moments they pattered violently on the roof like a series of hammer-strokes; then suddenly they ceased.

“Come in, chile,” said Aunt Hager.

She closed the door as the green apple-tree began to sway in the wind and a small hard apple fell, rolling rapidly down the top of the piano-box that sheltered the chickens. Inside the kitchen it was almost dark. While Aunt Hager lighted an oil-lamp, the child climbed to a chair and peered through the square window into the yard. The leaves and flowers of the morning-glory vines on the back fence were bending with the rising wind. And across the alley at the big house, Mrs. Kennedy’s rear screen-door banged to and fro, and Sandy saw her garbage-pail suddenly tip over and roll down into the yard, scattering potato-peelings on the white steps.

“Sho gwine be a terrible storm,” said Hager as she turned up the wick of the light and put the chimney on. Then, glancing through the window, she saw a black cloud twisting like a ribbon in the western sky, and the old woman screamed aloud in sudden terror: “It’s a cyclone! It’s gwine be a cyclone! Sandy, let’s get over to Mis’ Carter’s quick, ’cause we ain’t got no cellar here. Come on, chile, let’s get! Come on, chile! . . . Come on, chile!”

Hurriedly she blew out the light, grabbed the boy’s hand; and together they rushed through the little house towards the front. It was quite dark in the inner rooms, but through the parlor windows came a sort of sooty grey-green light that was rapidly turning to blackness.

“Lawd help us, Jesus!”

Aunt Hager opened the front door, but before she or the child could move, a great roaring sound suddenly shook the world, and, with a deafening division of wood from wood, they saw their front porch rise into the air and go hurtling off into space. Sailing high in the gathering darkness, the porch was soon lost to sight. And the black wind blew with terrific force, numbing the ear-drums.

For a moment the little house trembled and swayed and creaked as though it were about to fall.

“Help me to shut this do’,” Aunt Hager screamed; “help me to shut it, Lawd!” as with all her might she struggled against the open door, which the wind held back, but finally it closed and the lock caught. Then she sank to the floor with her back against the wall, while her small grandson trembled like a leaf as she took him in her lap, mumbling: “What a storm! . . . O, Lawdy! . . . O, ma chile, what a storm!”

They could hear the crackling of timbers and the rolling limbs of trees that the wind swept across the roof. Her arms tightened about the boy.

“Dear Jesus!” she said. “I wonder where is yo’ mama? S’pose she started out fo’ home ’fore this storm come up!” Then in a scream: “Have mercy on ma Annjee! O, Lawd, have mercy on this chile’s mamma! Have mercy on all ma chillens! Ma Harriett, an’ ma Tempy, an’ ma Annjee, what’s maybe all of ’em out in de storm! O, Lawd!”

A dry crack of lightning split the darkness, and the boy began to wail. Then the rain broke. The old woman could not see the crying child she held, nor could the boy hear the broken voice of his grandmother, who had begun to pray as the rain crashed through the inky blackness. For a long while it roared on the roof of the house and pounded at the windows, until finally the two within became silent, hushing their cries. Then only the lashing noise of the water, coupled with the feeling that something terrible was happening, or had already happened, filled the evening air.

After the rain the moon rose clear and bright and the clouds disappeared from the lately troubled sky. The stars sparkled calmly above the havoc of the storm, and it was still early evening as people emerged from their houses and began to investigate the damage brought by the twisting cyclone that had come with the sunset. Through the rubbish-filled streets men drove slowly with horse and buggy or automobile. The fire-engine was out, banging away, and the soft tang-tang-tang of the motor ambulance could be heard in the distance carrying off the injured.

Black Aunt Hager and her brown grandson put their rubbers on and stood in the water-soaked front yard looking at the porchless house where they lived. Platform, steps, pillars, roof, and all had been blown away. Not a semblance of a porch was left and the front door opened bare into the yard. It was grotesque and funny. Hager laughed.

“Cyclone sho did a good job,” she said. “Looks like I ain’t never had no porch.”

Madam de Carter, from next door, came across the grass, her large mouth full of chattering sympathy for her neighbor.

“But praise God for sparing our lives! It might’ve been worse, Sister Williams! It might’ve been much more calamitouser! As it is, I lost nothin’ more’n a chimney and two wash-tubs which was settin’ in the back yard. A few trees broke down don’t ’mount to nothin’. We’s livin’, ain’t we? And we’s more importanter than trees is any day!” Her gold teeth sparkled in the moonlight.

“’Deed so,” agreed Hager emphatically. “Let’s move on down de block, Sister, an’ see what mo’ de Lawd has ’stroyed or spared this evenin’. He’s gin us plenty moonlight after de storm so we po’ humans can see this lesson o’ His’n to a sinful world.”

The two elderly colored women picked their way about on the wet walk, littered with twigs and branches of broken foliage. The little brown boy followed, with his eyes wide at the sight of baby-carriages, window-sashes, shingles, and tree-limbs scattered about in the roadway. Large numbers of people were out, some standing on porches, some carrying lanterns, picking up useful articles from the streets, some wringing their hands in a daze.

Near the corner a small crowd had gathered quietly.

“Mis’ Gavitt’s killed,” somebody said.

“Lawd help!” burst from Aunt Hager and Madam de Carter simultaneously.

“Mister and Mis’ Gavitt’s both dead,” added a nervous young white man, bursting with the news. “We live next door to ’em, and their house turned clean over! Came near hitting us and breaking our side-wall in.”

“Have mercy!” said the two women, but Sandy slipped away from his grandmother and pushed through the crowd. He ran round the corner to where he could see the overturned house of the unfortunate Gavitts.

Good white folks, the Gavitts, Aunt Hager had often said, and now their large frame dwelling lay on its side like a doll’s mansion, with broken furniture strewn carelessly on the wet lawn—and they were dead. Sandy saw a piano flat on its back in the grass. Its ivory keys gleamed in the moonlight like grinning teeth, and the strange sight made his little body shiver, so he hurried back through the crowd looking for his grandmother. As he passed the corner, he heard a woman sobbing hysterically within the wide house there.

His grandmother was no longer standing where he had left her, but he found Madam de Carter and took hold of her hand. She was in the midst of a group of excited white and colored women. One frail old lady was saying in a high determined voice that she had never seen a cyclone like this in her whole life, and she had lived here in Kansas, if you please, going on seventy-three years. Madam de Carter, chattering nervously, began to tell them how she had recognized its coming and had rushed to the cellar the minute she saw the sky turn green. She had not come up until the rain stopped, so frightened had she been. She was extravagantly enjoying the telling of her fears as Sandy kept tugging at her hand.