The Big Sea (Masterplots II: Nonfiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Langston Hughes
- First Published: 1940
- Type of Work: Autobiography
- Time of Work: 1919-1931
- Setting: The United States, Mexico, Africa, and Europe
- Principal Characters: Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, Jessie Fauset, Charles S. Johnson, James Weldon Johnson, Vachel Lindsay, Alain Locke
- Genres: Nonfiction, Autobiography
- Subjects: African Americans, Discrimination, Memory, Racism, Authors or writers, Harlem Renaissance, Manners or customs, Poetry or poets, Social life, Writing
- Locales: Africa, New York, Mexico, Paris, France, Washington, D.C., Kansas, Cleveland, OH, Illinois
Form and Content
Published in 1940, the first volume of Langston Hughes’s autobiography, The Big Sea, traces his life to 1931; the second volume, I Wonder As I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey (1956), generally judged to be inferior to its predecessor, took up the saga of the poet’s life and adventures from 1931 to 1938. The Big Sea confines its scope to selected portions of Hughes’s childhood, his youth, and his development as a poet in the Harlem Renaissance or New Negro movement of the 1920’s. Hughes divided the text of his poetic...
[The entire page is 2467 words long]
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