[Review of] Langston Hughes. The Big Sea: An Autobiography

In the last ten years a number of critical studies on the Harlem Renaissance have been published, and these in turn have sparked a revival of interest in the cultural, political, and social activities that took place during the ten-year period in Afroamerican history between 1919 and 1929. There is a renewed interest in the life and writings of Renaissance figures such as Arna Bontemps, Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larson, Claude McKay, and Langston Hughes. Hence many of their autobiographies, first published in the 1930s and 1940s, are being reissued in response to the demand for more information on the era when the Negro was in vogue. This latest edition of Hughes\u27s first autobiography The Big Sea is part of this larger revival and follows very closely behind the reprint of his contemporary Zora Neale Hurston\u27s Dust Tracks on a Road (University of Illinois Press, 1986)