Langston Hughes’ Haiti Scrapbook, 1931

Haiti, land of blue sea and green hills, white fishing boats on the sea, and the hidden huts of peasants in the tall mountains. People strong, midnight black. Proud women whose arms bear burdens, whose backs are very straight. Children naked as nature. Nights full of stars, throbbing with Congo drums. At the capital lovely ladies ambergold, mulatto politicians, warehouses full of champagne, banks full of money. A surge of black peasants who live on the land, and the foam of the cultured elite in Port-au-Prince who live on the peasants.

Langston Hughes, from Autobiography: I Wonder as I Wander (1956), reprinted in Foreign Policy (14 January 2010)

Image: Langston Hughes, Haiti Scrapbook (ca. 1931). Yale Collection of American Literature, Bienecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Note: click here and scroll down and click on  “Multi-image set/See all images in this set” to see the contents of the scrapbook.