About the Book

With care and no-holds-barred insight, My America removes the veneer of respectability often placed on Hughes's work and life to reveal his political adeptness. In a world threatened by fascism, Hughes's writing wasn't 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.

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 Hughes's 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.

About the Author

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.

Website: randalmauricejelks.com

Substack: Notes from the Black Bottom

Instagram: @drjelks

About Angela Ajayi

Angela Ajoyi’s story “Galina” appeared in Fifth Wednesday Journal and won the 2017 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. Her essays, short stories, and book reviews have appeared in Literary Hub, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Pleiades, and the Minnesota Star Tribune, where she was a contributing book critic. Everything is Freedom, her debut novel-in-stories, is forthcoming from Forest Avenue Press in 2027. She live in Minneapolis.