Not So Simple: The "Simple" Stories By Langston Hughes. - Review - book reviews

Studies in Short Fiction, Summer, 1997 by Michele L. Simms-Burton

NOT SO SIMPLE: THE "SIMPLE" STORIES BY LANGSTON HUGHES by Donna Akiba Sullivan Harper. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1995. xviii 260 pages. $19.95.

Langston Hughes's poetry maintains a presence in the American and African-American literary canons. However, his "Simple" stories are little known by scholars and students, except for experts in African-American literature. Donna Akiba Sullivan Harper provides the first thorough analyses of the origin and development of Hughes's Simple character and tales, chronicling the publication of these tales in the Chicago Defender, and their subsequent publication as collections of short stories in Simple Speaks His Mind (1950), Simple Takes a Wife (1953), Simple Stakes a Claim (1957), and Simple's Uncle Sam (1965).

Harper initiates her analyses by pointing to the fact that in using the words "simple" and "simplicity" to describe Hughes's work, scholars have' thereby "dismiss[ed] it as being too simple to merit literary analysis." However, Harper argues that a close reading of Hughes's Simple stories reveals a process of development and a character that are "not so simple." Harper's reading exposes a complex melding of voice and characterization that exemplifies Hughes's talents as a writer.

Hughes's Simple stories originated in a daily column entitled "Here to Yonder" that he wrote for a Negro newspaper, the Chicago Defender, from 1942 to 1949. Harper contends that "Here to Yonder" addressed the everyday problems faced by African Americans in a highly racialized and oppressive America through the voices of two characters: the foil, who eventually came to be known as Ananias Boyd, and Jesse B. Semple, also known as "Simple." The foil gave voice to the more educated, middle-class African-American male while Simple represented the views of the common Harlemite--one who was less educated and who worked in a menial job that did not fully use his training or talents.

Historical, economic and cultural contexts strongly impinged on and influenced the development of Hughes's characters and stories. The Second World War, racism, segregation, the separate but equal doctrine, oppression and poverty often steered the conversations between the foil and Simple in their neighborhood bar in Harlem. Harper argues that Hughes's efforts to demonstrate how global issues profoundly affected African Americans added a dimension to his writings that had hitherto been neglected in the works of other black writers. Despite Simple's humble existence and relatively limited exposure, he was able to understand the most complex world issues and discuss how they affected him and common black folks like himself.

This text traces the not-so-simple process that Hughes undertook to adapt the early Simple stories from the domain of his weekly column into a collection of short stories entitled Simple Speaks His Mind, published by Simon and Schuster in 1950. Harper observes that under the aegis and tutelage of Maria Leiper, an editor at Simon and Schuster, Hughes was able to recraft the Simple stories, achieving a consistency in narrative and voice that catapulted Simple into popular consciousness. The publication of Simple Speaks His Mind (1950) thus expanded Simple's audience from the predominantly black readers of the Negro press to a larger white audience, thereby beginning the process of making Simple a folk hero in American literature and culture.

Exhaustive research and a succinct prose style make Harper's text necessary for any complete analysis of Langston Hughes as a writer. However, do not expect anything more than a cursory reading or analysis of Simple solely as a character. Instead, Harper's task has been to present the entire body of Simple tales and their relation and development to Hughes's life work. Although Hughes's poetry is often taught in American and African-American literature courses, Harper's text does much to reacquaint and newly acquaint scholars and students with Hughes's previously neglected Simple stories.

MICHELE L. SIMMS-BURTON

The George Washington University