“This is precisely the time when we needed this long-overdue book: an exquisite selection of Mexican and Cuban stories translated by Langston Hughes, a man who was a fierce traveler of his time, with a rich introduction by Ricardo Wilson. These stories combine literary virtuosity with an ear for the pulse of history, and Hughes’s translation is committed to the political bravery and curiosity that led him to undertake this work. A true jewel of a book.”
Yuri Herrera, author of Signs Preceding the End of the World
In late 1934, Langston Hughes, already established as a leading voice of literary Black America, traveled to Mexico City, where he stayed for more than five months and began translating short fiction by prominent Mexican and Cuban writers. These stories, as he wrote to a friend, explore “the revolutions and uprisings, sugar cane, Negroes, Indians, corrupt generals, [and] American imperialists,” and are “mostly all left stories, because practically all the writers down here are left these days.” But when Hughes proposed publishing the stories as a book, to be titled Troubled Lands, his agent discouraged him from further pursuing the project and it remained unpublished, until now, with only a handful of the translations making their way into contemporary magazines. This volume presents Hughes’s translations of these stories together for the first time as he originally envisioned. Edited by Ricardo Wilson, the book also features an introduction and brief biographies of the included writers.
Princeton University Press