Where to start with: Langston Hughes

The leader of the Harlem Renaissance wrote poems and plays, short stories and children’s books. If you’re new to Hughes’ work, here are some good places to begin

Poet, writer and activist Langston Hughes is best known for popularising jazz poetry and leading the Harlem Renaissance, the African American cultural movement in New York City in the 1920s. A century on, what can we learn from the great writer’s rich catalogue of work? Performance poet, author and film-maker Malik Al Nasir explains how he fell in love with Hughes’s writing as a young man – and how you can too.

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A nigger night,

A nigger joy.