Best known as the leader of the Harlem Renaissance, the celebrated poet and writer Langston Hughes believed in the power of art as resistance. What can we learn from his works today?

Randal M. Jelks delivers this revelatory portrait of the celebrated poet, essayist, playwright, and American artist Langston Hughes. My America traces Hughess journey from a child captivated by the wonder of Kansas City to cosmopolitan witness in Paris, New York, Mexico City, and Madrid. We encounter Hughes as a young man discovering the pulse of modern life in a world on the verge of exploding metaphorically and literally. His experiences informed his work and his thinking on art, democracy, and activism.

Langston Hughes is one of the few American writers who consistently wrote about democracy from a joyous perspective, and My America explores how his works speak to the political anxieties and crises we face today. Jelks deftly examines the themes in Hughess work, including creative expression, communal dignity, class struggle, and human suffering and what they mean for our inner well-being as democratic persons and political participants.

With care and no-holds-barred insight, My America removes the veneer of respectability often placed on Hughess work and life to reveal his political adeptness. In a world threatened by fascism, Hughess writing wasnt afforded the luxury of subtlety. He made a spiritual and political decision to stand on the side of the oppressed. He believed art should be practiced for the sake of justice. And democracy can be practiced with joy.

Randal Maurice Jelks is a professor, documentary producer, and award-winning author. His writings have appeared in the Boston Review and the Los Angeles Review of Books, as well as blogs, journals, newspapers, and other periodicals. He is the coeditor of the academic journal American Studies.

"This thought-provoking and readable collection reminds us of the fragility of democracy and of the role that artists and writers can play in envisioning a just world. By resisting a sanitized version of Hughes, My America presents him as a radical thinker who, at the risk of criticism and scorn, demanded better of our country." --BookPage

"Jelks offers readers an engaging, introspective view of poet Langston Hughes and curates a compelling narrative of Hughes as an activist, advocate, and champion of justice through his poetry. This spellbinding review of Langstons writings employs an invisible cinematic lens through which Jelks reveals Langstons life journey from childhood to adult, from the United States to Europe, describing his radical attempts to share his vision of living in a democracy. . . . A thought-provoking, enlightening read." --Library Journal

"In this fascinating, creative, and deeply researched work, accomplished scholar Randal Maurice Jelks turns his attention to beloved poet Langston Hughes and the ever urgent quest for democracy. As such, Hughes joins Martin Luther King and Benjamin Elijah Mays, others who have garnered Jelkss analytical attention. Here, though, he engages his subject as an observer, commenter, and interlocutor, giving us a text that is as dynamic as it is thought-provoking." --Farah Jasmine Griffin, William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African-American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University, and author of Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature

"At once timely and meticulous, Randal Maurice Jelkss My America: Langston Hughes on Democracy points readers in a new critical direction during this perilous moment in American history. Each chapter presents a crucial essay or poem by Langston Hughes, followed by Jelkss commentaries that reflect historical and experiential knowledge in a manner befitting Hughes. Indeed, during a period when many academic theorists have ignored the rise of right-wing extremism, Jelkss My America reminds us that Hughess writings are conceptual windows to political wisdom and alternative ideas." --Tony Bolden, professor of African and African-American Studies, director of Undergraduate Studies, and editor of The Langston Hughes Review at the University of Kansas, and author of Groove Theory: The Blues Foundation of Funk

"This book is the Langston Hughes I most like, the political and dramatic Hughes. Dr. Jelks explores what I believe are the moments that most defined his public life: his brush with McCarthyism and his failed attempt to work in Hollywood. Hughes will always be current, but with this book, Dr. Jelks has made it refreshingly clear and completely up-to-date. At a time when Black history is under attack and being censored, we truly need this book!" --Kevin Willmott, screenwriter of Da 5 Bloods, The 24th, and BlacKkKlansman, and director of the film William Allen White: Whats the Matter with Kansas?