9. Jazz, Blues, and Gospel: Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison

Books

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, Vintage Books, ISBN: 0-679-74472-X

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, Plume Books, ISBN: 0452282195

Poems by Langston Hughes and “Sonny’s Blues” (short story) by James Baldwin will be distributed to participants.

Program Description

The issues of race and class represent the defining questions
and tragedies of the United States, and the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, and forced desegregation have shaped the artistic and cultural landscape, changing the
way people think, feel, and hear. We’ll travel a portion of this landscape with three giants of American literature: Langston Hughes, the jazz poet of the Harlem Renaissance; James Baldwin, a moral philosopher who takes part of his fire from the blues and gospel; and Toni Morrison, a novelist and master of the blues elegy. We’ll read a selection of poems by Hughes, the short story “Sonny’s Blues” and the book-length essay The Fire Next Time by Baldwin, and The Bluest Eye by Morrison. We’ll explore how the issues of race and class inform these works and how the artistry of these writers, particularly their affinity for music, offers a type of redemption or hope in the face of tragedy.

Discussion Leader

Joseph Coulson hails from Detroit and is a novelist, playwright, poet, and musician. He served as editorial director and senior editor for the Great Books Foundation in Chicago from 1999 to 2003. His novel, The Vanishing Moon, received the 2004 Book of the Year Award in Literary Fiction from ForeWord Magazine. His love for these authors begins with the belief that in literature and in life the soul of America is the long sad struggle of black and white.