NOT WITHOUT LAUGHTER: A Blues cadence

Langston Hughes still laughs and smiles in this centenary portrait of North America, if we adjust to the 1912 year written in the letter sent by Jimboy in the chapter III of the novel, no matter it has been published until 1930.

This book makes its way in at least three different paths: Literature, American racial history, and Music.

Literature

For literature it is a work of craftsmanship, where every character speaks with its very own voice, not only in the psychological sense, but also in the phonetics of the transcribed vocabularies.

The author enhances through subtle variations of the language the multiple social backgrounds in the same group: the adults freed not so much time ago from slavery, the boys and girls who attend the school so conscious but innocent of the racial differences, the nomadic musicians, the wise liars, the white folks. 

The descriptions are detailed, almost cinematographic: one could draw a precise storyboard from every chapter because all of the persons and even every object have a specific position, their own movement and color.

It is inevitable to read this novel, written inside the Harlem Renaissance movement, and not to think about the writings of the Jazz Age of F. Scott Fitzgerald, as their "white" counterpart, yet their books were published by the same years, and both authors were born with a difference of only six years.

Curious symmetries: though not the main character in the work of Langston Hughes, at the end of the novel, Jimboy goes to the war in Europe, while Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby comes from the war in Europe. Both characters were from rural mid west and later established themselves in big cities (Chicago and New York, respectively).

American racial history

 If it were necessary to define this book in a word, I would choose kindness.

Kindness is a proper term if you have to deal with the shameful facts that had at that time, and still do now, a painful remembrance for many people. Hughes was capable to tell a history of racism with a proud voice, sometimes with obvious rage, but without hate.

No matter the described humiliations, there is always an implicit kindness, an explanation though not a justification of these, while the offender invariably bears with the shame. Hughes doesn't want to deprive us of the joy of reading: be it poverty, prostitution, illness, racism, or death, his characters confront extreme situations with dignity.

He tells a social story through the deep motivations of the colored people, their needs and dreams, their aspirations and frustrations, the transition from rural communities to urban landscapes.  

Hughes had the virtue of pointing out the social implications of the black hues to the "white folks" which until then, viewed only an homogenized landscape of colored people:

In the words of Jimboy:

"We too dark for 'em, ma," he laughed. "How they gonna see in the dark? You colored folks oughta get lighter, that's what!" 

Hughes made the people saw beyond the darkness, giving them some chromatic precisions, of which I found more than thirty along the book, and here are some examples:

Leather-colored, clay-colored, biscuit-colored, mustard-colored, yellow, lemon-yellow, mahogany-brown, maple-sugar brown, autumn-leaf brown, dark-purple, coal-black, blue-black, powder-grey, ebony, orange, tan, creamy-gold.

Music

I have to limit this comments to a literary analysis, but I dare that musical elements are so complex in this book that they would need a separate essay.

The constant references to the lyrics themes and their vocabulary; the origins of the American black music: slavery, hard work, and the lodges; the description and integration of bands and instruments; the names and nicknames of the musicians; the evolving rhythms: all of this would deserve a complete analysis. In fact, I found there are some academic books about this matter, and I tried to track some of the musicians names to verify them, and I found they are...well, made up.

Hughes filled this story with a sort of blues cadence, with lyrics as those heard by Sandy in the great chorus out of the black past at the end of the infamous Children's Day:

There's a star fo' you an' me,

Stars beyond!  

I would like to finish pointing out one paragraph so full of poetry and rhythm, that it seems to be the musical climax of this novel; unbelievably, it brought to me some dickensonian echoes, as fresh in my mind was the recent reading of Bleak House. 

This paragraph is located in the chapter of Not Without Laughter titled Dance:

The earth rolls relentlessly, and the sun blazes for ever on the earth, breeding, breeding. But why do you insist like the earth, music? Rolling and breeding, earth and sun for ever, relentlessly. But why do you insist like the sun? Like the lips of women? Like the bodies of men, relentlessly?

"Aw, play it, Mister Benbow!"