The emerging artist E. Simms Campbell provided
the illustrations. Popo and Fifinawas the first of
many books for children that Bontemps would
publish during his lifetime.
The inspiration for the book came from
Hughes, who had spent time traveling through the
Caribbean. The duo submitted their proposal for
the book, which, according to Hughes biographer
Faith Berry, they envisioned as a “travel story,” to
Macmillan Publishers in 1932, the same year in
which it was published (Berry, 139).
The story revolved around two Haitian chil-
dren, Popo and Fifina, and their family life. The
story recounts the children’s adventures at play
and the family’s move from a farm to a coastal vil-
lage. The volume is marked for its picturesque im-
ages of life in HAITIand the winsome adventures
of the children. ALAINLOCKEdescribed the work
as “a flimsy sketch, a local-color story of Haitian
child life” (Berry, 184). Yet, according to Arnold
Rampersad, more than a decade after its publica-
tion, some 500 copies of the book still were being
sold annually. The lasting popularity of Popo and
Fifina prompted at least one translation into
Japanese, decades after its initial publication.
Bibliography
Berry, Faith, ed. Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond
Harlem.Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill & Com-
pany, 1983.
Bontemps, Arna, and Langston Hughes. Popo and Fifina.
1932; reprint, New York: Oxford University Press,
1993.
Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes: I, Too,
Sing America.Vol. 1, 1902–1941.New York: Oxford
University Press, 1986.
PorgyDuBose Heyward(1925)
The novel by DUBOSEHEYWARD that became
the basis of a celebrated BROADWAYmusical. Set
in Charleston, South Carolina, the novel revolves
around the Gullah community of Catfish Row, a
gritty Charleston neighborhood. The protagonist
is Porgy, a crippled man who regularly gambles
away the alms that he receives during the day.
Porgy begins to change for the better when Bess,
a lively and energetic woman, comes into his life.
Unfortunately, his happiness is short-lived be-
cause Bess succumbs to the evils of drugs and de-
cides to abandon Porgy for Crown, a violent gam-
bler with whom she was involved in the past.
Heyward, who initially drafted his protago-
nist as Porgo, used his own observations of the
Charleston docks and African-American neigh-
borhoods to inform his novel. The novel opens
with the bold and revisionist assertion that
“Porgy lived in the Golden Age. Not the Golden
Age of a remote and legendary past, nor yet the
chimerical era treasured by every man past mid-
dle life, that never existed except in the heart of
youth; but an age when men, not yet old, were
boys in an ancient, beautiful city that time had
forgotten before it destroyed.” The relationship
between Porgy and Bess is restorative for them
both. In the wake of her time with Porgy, “Bess
had undergone a subtle change that became
more evident from day to day. Her gaunt figure
had rounded out, bringing back a look of youth-
ful comeliness, and her face was losing its hunted
expression. The air of pride that had always
shown in her bearing, which had amounted al-
most to disdain, that had so infuriated the virtu-
ous in her evil days, was heightened, and in her
bettered condition forced a resentful respect
from her feminine traducers.”
JOHNFARRAR, editor of the Bookmanand a
representative of the George Doran publishing
company, was instrumental in the publication of
Porgy.Due to Farrar’s support, the novel appeared
in three installments in the Bookmanand went on
to receive critical acclaim when the book version
appeared. Many of Heyward’s white southern peers
in Charleston praised the author for having “got-
ten so close to the life of the Negro.” Brisk book
sales prompted a second edition in 1928, and the
new volume included sketches and illustrations by
Heyward’s Charleston neighbor, Elizabeth O’Neill
Verner.Bibliography
Durham, Frank. DuBose Heyward: The Man Who Wrote
Porgy.Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1965.
Hutchisson, James. DuBose Heyward: A Charleston Gen-
tleman and the World of Porgy and Bess.Jackson:
University Press of Mississippi, 2000.
Slavick, William. DuBose Heyward.Boston: Twayne Pub-
lishers, 1981.428 Porgy