NOT WITHOUT LAUGHTER by Langston Hughes...

NOT WITHOUT LAUGHTER by Langston Hughes (Scribner: $11; 299 pp.). Written in 1930, Hughes’ novel depicts the intergenerational conflicts within an early 20th-Century Afro-American family. Aunt Hager Williams, the family matriarch, has spent her life doing laundry to support her family. Her labors have brought her scant happiness: Tempy, her oldest daughter, snubs her family for the new black bourgeoisie; Anjee, the middle daughter, married an irresponsible drifter and left their son in his grandmother’s care; Harriet, the youngest daughter has abandoned her mother’s stern Fundamentalism for a life of pleasure. Anjee’s son, Sandy, becomes the focus of an internecine power struggle, in which the renegade Henriett argues Hughes’ belief in the importance of education.