-
The Big Sea
- An Autobiography
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
![Prime logo](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/Audible/Homestead/Prime_Logo_RGB.png)
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $18.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
Langston Hughes, born in 1902, came of age early in the 1920s. In The Big Sea he recounts those memorable years in the two great playgrounds of the decade - Harlem and Paris. In Paris he was a cook and waiter in nightclubs. He knew the musicians and dancers, the drunks and dope fiends. In Harlem he was a rising young poet - at the center of the "Harlem Renaissance."
Arnold Rampersad writes in his incisive new introduction to The Big Sea, an American classic: "This is American writing at its best - simpler than Hemingway; as simple and direct as that of another Missouri-born writer...Mark Twain."
Featured Article: 175+ of the Best Quotes from Black Authors, Activists, Entrepreneurs, and Artists to Celebrate Black History Month
Black History is American History. Whether writers, poets, activists, entertainers, scientists, entrepreneurs, or some combination thereof, Black people have frequently offered exactly the right words when they were needed most. This sweeping collection of wise, stirring, and thought-provoking words from Black Americans offers much to inspire all Americans.
More from the same
Related to this topic
-
The 42nd Parallel
- By: John Dos Passos
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 13 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This first entry in John Dos Passos's celebrated U.S.A. trilogy paints a grand picture of the United States at the dawn of the twentieth century.
-
-
Powerful document of an all-too-familiar past
- By Ryan on 06-01-13
By: John Dos Passos
-
The Cigar Factory
- A Novel of Charleston
- By: Michele Moore
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cassie McGonegal and her niece, Brigid, work upstairs in the factory rolling cigars by hand. Meliah Amey Ravenel works in the basement, where she stems the tobacco. While both white and black workers suffer in the harsh working conditions of the factory and both endure the sexual harassment of the foremen, segregation keeps them from recognizing their common plight until the Tobacco Workers Strike of 1945.
-
-
A Tale of Two Charlestons
- By Susie on 08-10-16
By: Michele Moore
-
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
- By: Betty Smith
- Narrated by: Kate Burton
- Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A moving coming-of-age story set in the 1900s, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn follows the lives of 11-year-old Francie Nolan, her younger brother Neely, and their parents, Irish immigrants who have settled in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Johnny Nolan is as loving and fanciful as they come, but he is also often drunk and out of work, unable to find his place in the land of opportunity.
-
-
Book: flawless. SKIP THE RECORDED INTRO!!
- By Wild Wise Woman on 09-04-11
By: Betty Smith
-
A Russian Journal
- By: John Steinbeck
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Steinbeck and Capa's account of their journey through Cold War Russia is a classic piece of reportage and travel writing.Just after the Iron Curtain fell on Eastern Europe, Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Steinbeck and acclaimed war photographer Robert Capa ventured into the Soviet Union to report for the New York Herald Tribune.
-
-
Extremely Interesting
- By Jean on 12-04-14
By: John Steinbeck
-
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
- By: Maya Angelou
- Narrated by: Maya Angelou
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age - and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. But years later, she learns about love for herself and the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors.
-
-
Emotional & Powerful
- By Miss Toni on 06-30-13
By: Maya Angelou
-
The Warmth of Other Suns
- The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
- By: Isabel Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 22 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.
-
-
Superior non-fiction
- By Lila on 05-20-11
By: Isabel Wilkerson
-
The 42nd Parallel
- By: John Dos Passos
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 13 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This first entry in John Dos Passos's celebrated U.S.A. trilogy paints a grand picture of the United States at the dawn of the twentieth century.
-
-
Powerful document of an all-too-familiar past
- By Ryan on 06-01-13
By: John Dos Passos
-
The Cigar Factory
- A Novel of Charleston
- By: Michele Moore
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cassie McGonegal and her niece, Brigid, work upstairs in the factory rolling cigars by hand. Meliah Amey Ravenel works in the basement, where she stems the tobacco. While both white and black workers suffer in the harsh working conditions of the factory and both endure the sexual harassment of the foremen, segregation keeps them from recognizing their common plight until the Tobacco Workers Strike of 1945.
-
-
A Tale of Two Charlestons
- By Susie on 08-10-16
By: Michele Moore
-
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
- By: Betty Smith
- Narrated by: Kate Burton
- Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A moving coming-of-age story set in the 1900s, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn follows the lives of 11-year-old Francie Nolan, her younger brother Neely, and their parents, Irish immigrants who have settled in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Johnny Nolan is as loving and fanciful as they come, but he is also often drunk and out of work, unable to find his place in the land of opportunity.
-
-
Book: flawless. SKIP THE RECORDED INTRO!!
- By Wild Wise Woman on 09-04-11
By: Betty Smith
-
A Russian Journal
- By: John Steinbeck
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Steinbeck and Capa's account of their journey through Cold War Russia is a classic piece of reportage and travel writing.Just after the Iron Curtain fell on Eastern Europe, Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Steinbeck and acclaimed war photographer Robert Capa ventured into the Soviet Union to report for the New York Herald Tribune.
-
-
Extremely Interesting
- By Jean on 12-04-14
By: John Steinbeck
-
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
- By: Maya Angelou
- Narrated by: Maya Angelou
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age - and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. But years later, she learns about love for herself and the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors.
-
-
Emotional & Powerful
- By Miss Toni on 06-30-13
By: Maya Angelou
-
The Warmth of Other Suns
- The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
- By: Isabel Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 22 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.
-
-
Superior non-fiction
- By Lila on 05-20-11
By: Isabel Wilkerson
-
A Handful of Dust
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Andrew Sachs
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Evelyn Waugh's 1934 novel is a bitingly funny vision of aristocratic decadence in England between the wars. It tells the story of Tony Last, who, to the irritation of his wife, is inordinately obsessed with his Victorian Gothic country house and life. When Lady Brenda Last embarks on an affair with the worthless John Beaver out of boredom with her husband, she sets in motion a sequence of tragicomic disasters that reveal Waugh at his most scathing.
-
-
Slow Start then Subtle
- By Michael on 05-16-15
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
The Immigrants
- By: Howard Fast
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is a love story of great beauty and great tenderness, the kind of love story that entangles the listener in the lives of the characters, so that after the story is over, one continues to live with those characters. And fortunately, the listener will not have to say farewell to these characters, since it is the first in a series that will tell the story of three Californian families over the course of the 20th century.
-
-
Narration style kills the story.
- By Glynis on 11-27-14
By: Howard Fast
-
On the Road: The Original Scroll
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: John Ventimiglia
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Though Jack Kerouac began thinking about the novel that was to become On the Road as early as 1947, it was not until three weeks in April 1951, in an apartment on West 20th Street in Manhattan, that he wrote the first full draft that was satisfactory to him.
-
-
A Classic Brought to Life
- By Sil A. on 11-25-16
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Homesick
- My Own Story
- By: Jean Fritz
- Narrated by: Jean Fritz
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This heartwarming fictionalized autobiography tells the story of what it is like for a little girl to be growing up in an unfamiliar place. While other girls her age were enjoying childhood in America, Jean Fritz was in China in the midst of political unrest. During this time, foreigners were becoming more and more unpopular, and evacuation at a moment’s notice was imminent. Although Jean appreciated the beauty of China - the mountains, the countryside, the sea - she knew she belonged in America and longed to make her home there.
-
-
Great book!
- By R. SEVERSON on 10-19-18
By: Jean Fritz
-
Nothing Daunted
- The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West
- By: Dorothy Wickenden
- Narrated by: Dorothy Wickenden, Margaret Nichols
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the summer of 1916, Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood, close friends from childhood and graduates of Smith College, left home in Auburn, New York, for the wilds of northwestern Colorado. Bored by their soci-ety luncheons, charity work, and the effete young men who courted them, they learned that two teach-ing jobs were available in a remote mountaintop schoolhouse and applied—shocking their families and friends.
-
-
Not as Described
- By Sara on 08-10-14
-
Eighty Days
- Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World
- By: Matthew Goodman
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur
- Length: 18 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On November 14, 1889, Nellie Bly, the crusading young female reporter for Joseph Pulitzer’s World newspaper, left New York City by steamship on a quest to break the record for the fastest trip around the world. Also departing from New York that day—and heading in the opposite direction by train—was a young journalist from The Cosmopolitan magazine, Elizabeth Bisland.
-
-
Who knew?
- By Susan Gardner Bowers on 03-18-13
By: Matthew Goodman
-
The Sheep Queen
- By: Tom Savage
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Thomas Savage, a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and a PEN/Faulkner Award nominee, has long been a critically acclaimed author. The New Yorker calls him "a writer of the first order". This starkly elegant story details the lives of Emma Russell Sweringen and her family in the early 1900s. Emma’s daughter Beth secretly gave up a baby girl for adoption many years ago. Now, Beth’s secret life is being unraveled as her daughter comes looking for her long-lost family.
-
-
Excellent in all respects
- By Marlene J. Gustafson on 05-11-19
By: Tom Savage
-
Clara Callan
- By: Richard B. Wright
- Narrated by: Anne Twomey, Joanna P. Adler
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two sisters, small-town Ontario, 1934. Canadian author Richard Wright tells their story, from the ordinary to the extraoridinary with an eye for the commonplace and poignant sense of the larger undercurrents that change people's lives.
-
-
charming intimate refreshing
- By L on 09-10-04
-
Around the World with Auntie Mame
- By: Patrick Dennis
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Encore, Encore! The brilliant sequel to the smash bestseller Auntie Mame is back and the reviews are in....
-
-
A classic!
- By Miss Right on 03-22-22
By: Patrick Dennis
-
The House at Sugar Beach
- A Memoir
- By: Helene Cooper
- Narrated by: Helene Cooper
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At once a deeply personal memoir and an examination of a violent and stratified country, The House at Sugar Beach tells of tragedy, forgiveness, and transcendence with unflinching honesty and a survivor's gentle humor. And at its heart, it is a story of Helene Cooper's long voyage home.
-
-
Can't recommend it
- By Taryn on 03-25-16
By: Helene Cooper
-
The Jew Store
- A Family Memoir
- By: Stella Suberman
- Narrated by: Donna Postel
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1920, in small-town America, the ubiquitous dry goods store was usually owned by Jews and often referred to as "the Jew store". That's how Stella Suberman's father's store, Bronson's Low-Priced Store, in Concordia, Tennessee, was known locally. The Bronsons were the first Jews to ever live in that tiny town of one main street, one bank, one drugstore, one picture show, one feed and seed, one hardware, one barber shop, one beauty parlor, one blacksmith, and many Christian churches.
-
-
Wonderful
- By Susan simpson on 09-04-21
By: Stella Suberman
-
Varina
- A Novel
- By: Charles Frazier
- Narrated by: Molly Parker
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With her marriage prospects limited, teenage Varina Howell agrees to wed the much-older widower Jefferson Davis, with whom she expects a life of security as a landowner. He instead pursues a career in politics and is eventually appointed president of the Confederacy, placing Varina at the white-hot center of one of the darkest moments in American history - culpable regardless of her intentions. The Confederacy falling, her marriage in tatters, and the country divided, Varina and her children escape Richmond and travel south on their own, now fugitives.
-
-
Read it rather than listen
- By Anonymous on 08-31-18
By: Charles Frazier
What listeners say about The Big Sea
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Lemart
- 03-13-20
Great Book
I had this book in my wish list for a while and just got around to reading it. I really found out quite a bit about the author. I didn't know he had such an adventurous life, Some intentional and some not. I also have a much better understanding of the Harlem Renaissance and who a lot of the artists were during that period. Whenever that period comes up, you only typically hear of only a handful of artists. Reading the book gave me a few more things to pick out to read. Sometimes literature can be timeless because some things about society have not changed much. The way he describes interactions between the races can almost be present day. I noted the exact same thing about Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin. I understand more about what inspired him to write what he did write. And it makes me want to read even more of Mr. Hughes' work.
The only thing that through me off was the recording. The narrator was great. I felt he was able to capture a lot of the experiences and emotion. It just sounded like they put him in a closet with a slight echo.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Char Tarter
- 11-26-21
His poetry and his life story are wonderful
Always loved his writing but his life story fills in how this literary artist became the icon he is now.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- ladypea
- 10-27-21
Amazing Story
This was a journey in the life of one of my favorite poets. I enjoyed getting to know the person behind the expressive, profound, and bold works he created. It seems to me that he was older than his years throughout this book. I want to praise both Arnold Rampersad and Dominic Hoffman for their dedication to this book's adaptation and performance. Well Done!!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 02-20-22
Langston Hughes was legendary 🙌🏾
such a beautifully written story of his life. just the way he wants to be known. the long introduction is so very necessary!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- lpeters
- 04-09-19
Great Life! Great Writer!
If you are interested in biographies and/or writers from the Harlem Rennaissance, this is your audible. Lanston Hughes is a poet, writer, and story-teller. He tells the reader about the start of his life and how he began his writing. Great story, written by him.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Charles Williams
- 07-02-23
My fav poet
Classic autobiography from the great poet/writer from the Harlem Renaissance era. Learned a lot about his family.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Roxie in Dallas
- 05-02-22
interesting, easy to listen to educational
rare view of struggles with what being a minority meant and still l means. beautifully written
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- james winters
- 08-25-22
Wanting to read more Langston Hughes now.
Great book. Excellent narrator! I hope he reads for all of the Langston Hughes books in Audible!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 12-01-18
loved this book!
overall I really enjoyed the diction of the audible reader. this story has a surprising amount of relatability to the struggles and plight of people of color today.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Antoine
- 06-25-21
Just as good
I loved listening to this book as much as I loved reading it many years ago.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!