Then it was that books began to happen to me.

Langston Hughes on being saved by books. (The Commonplace Book Project)

The Commonplace Project is a daily post based on Ray Bradbury’s advice to aspiring writers: read a poem, a short story, and an essay every day for 1000 days. These posts start with a quote and go wherever the rabbit hole leads. Follow The 1000 Day MFA so you don’t miss a thing.

“I was unhappy for a long time, and very lonesome, living with my grandmother. Then it was that books began to happen to me, and I began to believe in nothing but books and the wonderful world in books — where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas.” — Langston Hughes, The Big Sea

I have no idea why, but I’m often surprised when I find out that someone comes from the midwest. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent most of my life with only one real irrational fear. Between the aliens, the psychotic children, and god only knows what else might be hiding in them, I am completely freaked out by corn fields. It’s hard for me to believe that something good (other than corn!) can come from one.

The idea of a young Langston Hughes, who in my mind is so polished and tightly connected to 1920s Harlem full of jazz and flappers, running around Kansas is almost jarring.

February 1 is Hughes’s 117th birthday. He was born in Missouri, but grew up mostly with his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas. His grandmother told him stories that instilled in him a deep racial pride. He went on to become a leader in the Harlem Renaissance.

“Through my grandmother’s stories always life moved, moved heroically toward an end. Nobody ever cried in my grandmother’s stories. They worked, or schemed, or fought. But no crying. When my grandmother died, I didn’t cry, either. Something about my grandmother’s stories (without her ever having said so) taught me the uselessness of crying about anything.” — in The Collected Works of Langston Hughes

I’ve written pretty often about how important books were to me when I was a teenager in Las Vegas during a time of intense family turmoil. Books saved me. There are certain books — my books — that did something different for me than other books did. I can’t really explain it. Every once in a while, in those years, I would find a book at a thrift store or at the library or in a box at someone’s garage sale, and it was just mine. It changed something in me. It made everything okay.

I carried those books with me well into adulthood, in a plastic milk crate.

When I read the quote above, especially the line then it was that books began to happen to me, I knew exactly what he meant.

The only book of poetry that is mine, in that way, is Selected Poems of Langston Hughes. I still remember buying it at a used book store when I was visiting my mother in California. I still remember sitting on my grandmother’s back patio and reading under a not-quite-bright-enough lightbulb and crying and not even really knowing why.

Here is Langston Hughes reading the poem that reached in shifted something in me. It’s his most famous poem. The play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry was named for it. Pretty much everyone loves it, so in retrospect it almost seems silly that when I was a scared and lonely fifteen-year-old girl, it felt like it was written just for me. I think, though, that’s the point.

As I wrote this post, I watched 2017’s biopic Marshall, which is about Thurgood Marshall, who was a classmate of Langston Hughes. Hughes is portrayed in the movie by Jussie Smollett.

Hughes’ Thank You Ma’am feels especially timely to me now, for some reason. Like maybe the world could stand a reminder of a different way to deal with people. If you haven’t read your short story yet today, I highly recommend it.

I’ve added Hughes’ autobiography, The Big Sea to my reading list.

I’ve also added Popo and Fifina, a children’s book collaboration between Hughes and Arna Bontemps.

Today’s Poem:

Dreams by Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams 
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She is an out-of-place Nevadan living in Northwestern PA with her husband, three superstar kids, two dementia patients, a good friend, Alfred the cat, and a yellow rescue dog named Maybelline Scout. She is the author of Viral Nation and Rebel Nationand the upcoming novel The Astonishing Maybe. She is the original Ninja Writer. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.