Coming Soon

By Langston Hughes

Introduction by Jasmine Mans

On Sale: Feb 3, 2026
Page Count: 272 pages
Publisher: Union Square & Co.
ISBN-13: 9781454964797

$14.99

$19.99 CAD

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Trade Paperback $14.99 $19.99 CAD
ebook $9.99 $12.99 CAD

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Langston Hughes’s debut novel, a moving portrait of African American family life in 1930s Kansas, newly reissued for Union Square & Co.’s Herald Classics line.

Originally published in 1930, Not Without Laughter follows Sandy Rogers as a boy living in rural Kansas to his arrival in Chicago as a young man, set against a backdrop of poverty, racial segregation, and the onset of World War I. Orbiting Sandy are a host of vividly realized family members, including his mother Annjee, a housekeeper for a wealthy white family; his irresponsible father Jimboy, who plays guitar and is constantly in search of work; his aunts, blues-singing Aunt Harriet and social-climbing Aunt Tempy; and his pious, strong-willed grandmother Hager, who holds the generations together.

Partly inspired by Langston Hughes’s early life in the Midwest, Not Without Laughter is the debut novel of the literary giant, a sweeping and elegiac family drama that traces Black life in the early twentieth century, an important setting in the history of a racially divided America.

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Herald Classics

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Langston Hughes

About the Author

Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri in 1901. Often called ‘The People’s Poet,’ he authored and edited over thirty works poetry, novels, plays, essays, and children’s books. He was a poetic innovator and a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance, and his writing promoted equality, condemned racism and injustice, and helped shape American literature and politics. He died on May 22, 1967, in New York City.

Danez Smith (Curator) is the author of four poetry collections including Bluff, Homie and Don’t Call Us Dead. Danez was won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, and has been a finalist for the NAACP Image Award in Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award. Danez lives in Minneapolis with their people.

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