Jesse B. Semple first sprang to life in Langston Hughes's weekly "Chicago Defender" column in 1943. Almost immediately, the "Simple stories," as they were routinely called, had a large and ever-increasing audience. Simple soon became Harlem's Everyman an ordinary black workingman, representative of the masses of black folks in the 1940s.
Simple had migrated to Harlem, like many other blacks, seeking to escape the racism of the South, and he celebrated his new freedoms despite the economic struggles he still confronted. Simple's bar buddy and foil in the stories is the better-educated,...
Jesse B. Semple first sprang to life in Langston Hughes's weekly "Chicago Defender" column in 1943. Almost immediately, the "Simple stories," as th...
In Volume 8 of "The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, " the genial Harlem everyman, Jesse B. Semple returns with his more cosmopolitan bar buddy, Ananias Boyd. Social climber Joyce Lane is now Mrs. Jesse B. Semple, and Simple has minimized his flirtatious contacts with other women. Despite these ongoing characters, the later Simple stories are very different from the earlier Simple tales. The later stories evoke the historical and social context within which they were written, a politically dangerous time for the fictional adventures and fantasies of the main characters.
"The Later...
In Volume 8 of "The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, " the genial Harlem everyman, Jesse B. Semple returns with his more cosmopolitan bar buddy,...