Words from My Heart

8/13/2018

Finding Langston by Lesa Cline-Ransome

"So the poetry you read is a way of putting all the things you feel inside on the outside."

It is 1946. Young Langston's life has been turned upside down. Gone are quite slow-paced days. Gone are family and friends. His warm rural Alabama hometown has been replaced with Chicago.

I pick up my life
And take it with me
And put it down in
Chicago, Detroit
Buffalo, Scranton.

After his mother dies, Langston's father decides to move north, seeking a better life for his son. Moving into a shabby apartment with wallpaper created from newspaper is a huge adjustment.

This Alabama transplant wears overalls and speaks with a distinctive drawl. Instantly he is derisively called "country boy" by the class bully. Others join in taunting the new boy in school.

He wonders, can he ever feel at home in this strange place?

Langston discovers a few things which help to make his life bearable. One is Miss Fulton, a neighbor in the apartment building and an English teacher at a local high school. She not only bakes delicious pie and cornbread but understands and encourages his love of reading.

"A library for colored folks? It's a library for Chicago residents."

A chance encounter with the branch of the public library is a new experience for him. Before moving to Chicago, he had little knowledge of a library. Upon entering for the building for first time, he is astounded to discover that he is welcomed and is encouraged to borrow books from its vast collection.

This young boy's world expands even further as he is introduced to poetry. He discovers a family secret: his mother loved the works of Hughes and included some of the author's lines in love letters to her husband. He learns that his mother selected Langston as the name for her son. She wanted to share her love of poetry with her child.

Finding Langston is an poignant snapshot of life in 1940’s Chicago for African Americans. Lesa Cline-Ransome paints an stirring portrait of the difficulties encountered by sharecroppers migrating north, seeking to escape a repressive existence and build a hopeful future. She pays tribute to the power of libraries and their potential to inspire, inform, and serve all people. This slim volume, liberally sprinkled with snippets of Langston Hughes' verses, offers an excellent introduction to the works of a premier American author. Young readers will be inspired to discover for themselves the work of African American poets.