Not Without Laughter Author:Langston Hughes "We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful..." — Langston Hughes, 1926 — The revolutionary manifesto preceded by four years Langston Hughes's long-awaited first novel, hi... more »s poignant story of a black boy growing to manhood in a small Kansas town in the 1930s. Not Without Laughter is neither the melodrama of Harlem's cabarets nor the sentimentality of southern cotton fields, but sensitive perception of simple people meeting as best they can the problems of a complex and destructive environment.« less