Langston Hughes was an important writer during the period known as the Harlem Renaissance (1920-1930). During that time, several black writers rose to prominence while expressing their views on the African-American experience. Those writers wanted to show the pain and suffering of their experience while at the same time showing the hopes and strengths of the black culture as a whole. Langston Hughes' Not Without Laughter, published in 1930, was quickly acknowledged as a representative novel of the Harlem Renaissance. Although he had published some poetry before, Not Without Laughter was Hughes' first novel. Critics hailed the book as an important work because it accurately expresses the life of rural Negroes during the early twentieth century; furthermore, it was praised for being a great work of fiction, with a meaningful plot and memorable characters. Thus, as noted by Farrison, the importance of Not Without Laughter is found in the fact that "it is an important social document as well as a literary work" (108).
Hughes' novel gives an overview of the rural black experience as seen through the eyes of a boy named Sandy. It is interesting to note that the book's narrative is largely based on the events of Hughes' own childhood. Although Not Without Laughter contains some autobiographical elements, Hughes did not attempt to directly relate his own life story through it. Rather, he fictionalized his personal experiences so that he could "tell the tale of his childhood longings, of the attentive family he had wished for himself, and of the beloved brown boy he had tried to be" (Rampersad 164). It is apparent that the character Sandy is meant to represent Hughes as a child. This is emphasized by the fact that the novel takes place in rural Kansas. Although Hughes was born in Missouri, he spent part of his childhood growing up in Lawrence, Kansas (Tolson 121). Furthermore, Farrison has pointed out that there are various si...