"But that was why Negroes were poor, because they were dancers, jazzers, clowns? ... The other way round would be better: dancers because of their poverty; singers because they suffered; laughing all the time because they must forget ... It's more like that, thought Sandy."
Depicting the lived experiences of a Black family in early-20th-century Kansas, "Not Without Laughter" centers in on the maturation of Sandy as he grows from a naive young boy to a young man trying to balance his duties to his race with his search for his place in the world.
As Langston Hughes's debut novel, one can see the author's poetic background fighting at times with the novel format. "Not Without Laughter" is semi-autobiographical, and the reader can easily see Hughes in Sandy's journey.
The roles of music, poverty, sexuality, and racism are rampant in the book, with elements of the story seeming a bit explicit for 1930. Hughes is at his most resonant when he is writing about the virtues of music.
"In the starry blackness the stinging notes of the guitar became a plaintive hum, like a breeze of palmettos; became a low moan, like the wind in a forest of live-oaks strung with long strands of hanging moss."
"The four black men in Benbow’s wandering band were exploring depths to which mere sound had no business to go. Cruel, desolate, unadorned was their music now, like the body of a ravished woman on the sun-baked earth; violent and hard, like a giant standing over his bleeding mate in the blazing sun. The odors of bodies, the stings of flesh, and the utter emptiness of soul when all is done—these things the piano and the drums, the cornet and the twanging banjo insisted on hoarsely to a beat that made the dancers move, in that little hall, like pawns on a frenetic checker-board."
Parts of "Not Without Laughter" are difficult to read, but the depiction of family bonds that remain through distance and frustration is lovingly rendered -- giving this novel a rightful place in the bibliography of the Harlem Renaissance.
"I's been livin' a long time in yesterday, Sandy chile, an' I knows there ain't no room in de world fo' nothin' mo'n love. I knows, chile! Ever'thing there is but lovin' leaves a rust on yo' soul. An' to love sho 'nough, you got to have a spot in yo' heart fo' ever'body -- great an' small, white an' black, an' them what's goo an' them what's evil -- 'cause love ain't got no crowded-out places where de good ones stays an' de bad ones can't come in. When it gets that way, then it ain't love."
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