# Not Without Laughter (Herald Classics)

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- Book: [Not Without Laughter (Herald Classics)](https://www.bookquiver.com/jasmine-mans/not-without-laughter-herald-classics) ([Not Without Laughter (Herald Classics).md](https://www.bookquiver.com/jasmine-mans/not-without-laughter-herald-classics.md))
- Authors: [Jasmine Mans](https://www.bookquiver.com/jasmine-mans), [Langston Hughes](https://www.bookquiver.com/langston-hughes)
- Publisher: union_square_co
- ISBN: 978-14-5496-479-7
- Published: 2026-03-05
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

Langston Hughes's debut novel, a moving portrait of African American family life in 1930s Kansas, newly reissued for Union Square & Co.'s Herald Classics line. Originally published in 1930, Not Without Laughter follows Sandy Rogers as a boy living in rural Kansas to his arrival in Chicago as a young man, set against a backdrop of poverty, racial segregation, and the onset of World War I. Orbiting Sandy are a host of vividly realized family members, including his mother Annjee, a housekeeper for a wealthy white family; his irresponsible father Jimboy, who plays guitar and is constantly in search of work; his aunts, blues-singing Aunt Harriet and social-climbing Aunt Tempy; and his pious, strong-willed grandmother Hager, who holds the generations together. Partly inspired by Langston Hughes's early life in the Midwest, Not Without Laughter is the debut novel of the literary giant, a sweeping and elegiac family drama that traces Black life in the early twentieth century, an important setting in the history of a racially divided America.