The Big Sea: An Autobiography

"This book is the chronicle of a bright and lively artistic ear that brought the African-American people full into the twentieth century. It is a wonderful book!” —Amiri Baraka

In his incisive introduction to The Big Sea, an American classic, Arnold Rampersad writes: "This is American writing at its best--simpler than Hemingway; as simple and direct as that of another Missouri-born writer...Mark Twain."

Langston Hughes, born in 1902, came of age early in the 1920s. In The Big Sea he recounts...