At the Crossroads

In the landscape of African-American literature Langston Hughes Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison form a powerful trinity offering sustained critiques of American culture on a range of levels -- socially artistically and psychically. One of the principal writers of the Harlem Renaissance Langston Hughes was virtuosic in his literary craft and one of his more powerful works -- Father and Son -- remains a landmark meditation on the alienation facing African-Americans on American soil. Building upon the mature work of Hughes Richard Wright reveals a nation of the bitter dream in his 1945 autobiography where a young black boy must come to terms with an education that is as violent as it is liberating. And Ralph Ellison whose 1952 novel remains of one the classic achievements in all modern literature offers existential equipment for living at the crossroads of American culture. In all this book is a blues-shaped study of three of the most important African-American artists who wrote within the conflicted and conflicting American context.