The short fiction of Langston Hughes …—from The Ways of White Folks (1934) to Laughing to Keep from Crying (1952) or Something in Common and Other Stories (1963), and particularly the Simple pieces, Simple Speaks His Mind (1950), Simple Takes a Wife (1952), Simple Stakes a Claim (1957)—is in my opinion the best and most likely to endure body of work about Blacks—and Whites—by an American Black prior to the beginnings of the new, varied, and vigorous Black literature of the sixties and seventies.

Hughes's narrative method tends to be relaxed and leisurely; he is at his best in his own combination of traditional short story, essay, and autobiographical reminiscence. He tends to be gentle rather than violent, more good natured than bitter, but his stories are deadly serious and highly provocative beneath their smooth surfaces…. [His] stories suggest as much or more about the nature of intolerance and atavistic reactions...