By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Although he is probably better known as a poet, Langston Hughes (1901-67), a leading writer of the Harlem Renaissance, also wrote some of the finest short stories of the early twentieth century, and ‘Red-Headed Baby’ is one of his best.
‘Red-Headed Baby’ was published in Hughes’ 1934 collection The Ways of White Folks, which examines the relations between white Americans and African Americans with sympathy and humour. In just a few pages, Hughes sketches out an encounter between a red-headed man and his former girlfriend, an African-American woman living in Florida.