{"id":512,"date":"2016-02-24T20:51:51","date_gmt":"2016-02-25T04:51:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/live-hemsouths-english-ucsb-edu-v01.pantheonsite.io\/?p=512"},"modified":"2016-02-24T20:55:48","modified_gmt":"2016-02-25T04:55:48","slug":"letters-from-langston-a-public-lecture-and-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hemsouths.english.ucsb.edu\/?p=512","title":{"rendered":"Letters from Langston: A Public Lecture and Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

\"Letters<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Please join us on\u00a0Thursday<\/b>,\u00a0February 25<\/b>\u00a0at\u00a05:30PM\u00a0<\/b>at\u00a0South Hall 2623<\/b>\u00a0(The Sankey Room<\/b>)\u00a0as editors\u00a0Evelyn Crawford<\/b>\u00a0and\u00a0MaryLouise Patterson<\/b>\u00a0discuss their book\u00a0Letters from Langston:\u00a0<\/b><\/i>From the Harlem Renaissance to the Red Scare\u00a0<\/b>and Beyond<\/b>\u00a0<\/i>(University of California Press). The editors will share memories of “Uncle Lang,” their activist parents, and their meticulous compilation of the edition.<\/span><\/p>\n

Guest presenters Geoffrey Jacques, Stephanie Batiste, Natasha O’Neill, and Christopher Williams\u00a0will read passages\u00a0<\/span>from the collection of correspondences. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.\u00a0<\/span>\u200b<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

From the official press release:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
“Letters from Langston<\/i> is a collection of unguarded and candid confidences\u2014both personal and\u00a0political\u2014between American literary giant, and leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance,\u00a0Langston Hughes and four of his closest African American friends, Louise Thompson\u00a0Patterson, William L. Patterson, Matt N. Crawford, and Evelyn Graves Crawford. The four\u00a0exchanged letters with Hughes for nearly forty years; three were important leftist political figures\u00a0and active members of the Communist Party. Like Hughes, all were investigated and harassed by\u00a0the F.B.I., and in the case of William L. Patterson, imprisoned for political reasons.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Letters from Langston<\/i> begins in 1930 and spans the succeeding decades, ending shortly before\u00a0Hughes\u2019s death in 1967. The two couples share their lives of political activism and the everyday\u00a0joys and sorrows of family life with their friend Langston. He, for his part, savors their\u00a0affections, companionship, and support during his own struggles as an often-misunderstood ‘literary sharecropper.’ This distinctive volume of correspondence captures stories of friends and\u00a0family, living in an era of uncertainty and sharing a vision of an idealized world\u2014one without\u00a0hunger, war, racism, and class oppression.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Evelyn Louise Crawford, a retired arts administrator and consultant, and MaryLouise Patterson, a pediatrician in clinical practice, are the daughters of Langston Hughes\u2019s cherished\u00a0friends…\u00a0Hughes was a frequent\u00a0guest in the homes of the two families and an ‘uncle’ to both girls who knew him from their\u00a0respective childhood years in California and New York.”<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Please join us on\u00a0Thursday,\u00a0February 25\u00a0at\u00a05:30PM\u00a0at\u00a0South Hall 2623\u00a0(The Sankey Room)\u00a0as editors\u00a0Evelyn Crawford\u00a0and\u00a0MaryLouise Patterson\u00a0discuss their book\u00a0Letters from Langston:\u00a0From the Harlem Renaissance to the Red Scare\u00a0and Beyond\u00a0(University of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hemsouths.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hemsouths.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hemsouths.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hemsouths.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hemsouths.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=512"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hemsouths.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":517,"href":"https:\/\/hemsouths.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512\/revisions\/517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hemsouths.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hemsouths.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hemsouths.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}