A short biography of celebrated Langston Hughes for young adult readers. Wallace situates Hughes in his time, covering the beauty and heartaches of Black life in twentieth-century America that inspired Hughes's major works--especially his most influential prose and poems including."The Negro Speaks of Rivers," "The Weary Blues," "Mother to Son," Montage of a Dream Deferred, Black Nativity, and "I, Too." Writing in almost all the major literary forms--verse, drama, the novel, autobiography, the short story, musical theater, and humor--in his day Hughes was as popular as he was prolific. This is a biography of a dreamer, a jazzman of letters, a Harlem luminary and people's poet. It is written to educate and inspire a new generation of young, budding writers and artists singing America, too.