Not Without Laughter

Taking place from 1912 to 1918,^[1] Not Without Laughter follows James "Sandy" Rodgers awakening to the realities of black life in a small Kansas town.

In his autobiography, The Big Sea, Hughes said that Not Without Laughter was semi-autobiographical, and that many of the characters included in the novel were based on his memories of growing up in Lawrence, Kansas, which he based the fictional town of Stanton, where most of the novel's events occur.^[2] He stated that "I wanted to write about a typical Negro family in the Middle West, about people like those I had known in Kansas. But mine was not a typical Negro family."^[3]

Initial reviews were mixed. The New York Times praised the book in "giving us [sic] an intimate picture of that type of Negro life which has been so popular with white writers in the recent decade".^[4] They stated that compared to novels like In Abraham's Bosom, Scarlet Sister Mary, and The Walls of Jericho, Hughes "has come closer grips with this material than have his white contemporaries" and "has exploited material that is even more picturesque". Although they criticized the pacing of the early chapters, calling it "very slow, even tedious, reading", as the book goes on "it moves as swiftly as a jazz rhythm".^[4] The Crisis called it "realistic and close to human beings" as well as "well written", but stated that "being a study of character rather than plot, it is not very strongly knit together and may not hold the sustained interests of most readers".^[5]

V. F. Calverton, writing for The Nation praised Hughes for depicting "the Negro in his most picturesque form" and noted how it "continues the healthy note begun in Negro fiction by Claude McKay and Rudolph Fisher".^[6] However, he criticized what he saw as "defects of style and weaknesses of structure", noting that the pacing of the first third of the novel had a "pedestrian slowness", also noting that the plot had "no high points of intensity to grip and overpower the reader".^[6] The Virgin Islands Daily News called it "one of the best" African-American novels, crediting it due to its focus on the "laughing, aching heart of the black man".^[7] During the 1930 Harmon Foundation Awards, the novel won the gold medal for literature.^[8]

Retrospective reviews have been positive. Maria Butler, writing for the Lawrence Journal-World in 2002, praised Hughes' "brilliant and lyrical use of prose" as well as his contrast of the novel's characters.^[2] Angela Flournoy, writing for The New York Times in 2018, called it "a debut in the best of ways" and stated that "it covers uncharted territory [and] compels its readers to see part of the world anew". She praised how Hughes "accesses the universal [sic] by staying faithful to the particulars of his characters and their way of life." She finished her review by stating that "Such a guide is still useful to readers and writers today. Perhaps now more than ever."^[9]