The Return of Simple

Collected humorous stories from Langston Hughes's column in the Chicago Defender, The Return of Simple chronicles the life and struggles of Jesse B. Semple, and are considered by many to represent the author's finest work.

From his familiar perch in a fictional Harlem bar, Simple held forth on a variety of subjects--low wages, interracial marriage, birth control, race riots, the police--then central to Black life in urban America. Many decades later, Simple's concerns are, startlingly, still...