The narrator, whose account is reminiscent of
an anthropological report, finds himself alone on an
“eerie road that stretched like a band of tinsel ribbon
into the distant mistiness.” Shortly after he sets out,
the narrator comes to a “mean hovel that not even
the sportive moonlight could trick into semblance of
a decent abode.” Despite his plea for accommoda-
tions, the man is turned away when the father of the
house informs him that the family is battling an ill-
ness that already has claimed the life of one of the
children. The father directs him to seek out Ma
Grady, a midwife who lives nearby with a person re-
ferred to only as “Mose.” The traveler offers five dol-
lars to the “wizened gray woman” who has “kinky
hair, crackled skin and filmy eyes [that] harmo-
niously blen[ded] in a washed-out neutral tone,” and
she promptly accepts it. After drinking a potion that
she gives to him to ward off his chill, the man clam-
bers into a bed with Mose, a “hulking straight figure
under the ragged covers” who “fortunately lay very
still with his face turned toward the wall.” The next
morning, while the traveler has his car repaired, he
finds out from the mechanics that the man with
whom he shared a bed was Ma Grady’s dead son. He
also learns that she needed five dollars in order to
provide the best funeral arrangements possible for
her son. The story ends on a contemplative note as
the narrator, who has survived a night alongside a
corpse and unwittingly contributed vital funds to a
grieving mother, considers the dramatic events and
the ways in which decisions and interactions can be
shaped by circumstance and need.
Big Sea, The: An Autobiography
Langston Hughes(1940)
This memoir by LANGSTONHUGHES, rich in anec-
dotes, fascinating details, and personal commen-
tary, was published in 1940. The first of his formal
autobiographical accounts, the volume was based
in part on the 1925 materials entitled “L’histoire de
ma vie,” which he produced to satisfy CARLVAN
VECHTEN’s repeated suggestion that he pen an ac-
count of his life story. He published a second mem-
oir, I Wonder As I Wander,in 1956.
Dedicated to Emerson and Toy Harper, the vol-
ume is divided into three sections entitled “Twenty-
one,” “Big Sea,” and “Black Renaissance.” The
epigraph that prefaces the work signals the optimism
and willingness to entertain the unexpected: “Life is
a big sea / full of many fish. / I let down my nets /
and pull.” The sections include a number of chap-
ters or “stories,” as Hughes refers to them, some of
which had been published previously in AMERI-
CANMERCURY, Scribner’s, OPPORTUNITY, ABBOTT’S
MONTHLY, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and Debate.
The memoir opens with an account of the often-
quoted scene in which the 21-year-old Hughes is
standing on the deck of the SS Malonejust off Sandy
Hook, New Jersey, and tosses all of the “books I had
had at Columbia, and all the books I had lately
bought to read.” About this moment, which he ad-
mits may seem “melodramatic,” he recalls that “then
it was like throwing a million bricks out of my heart
when I threw the books into the water” (31). This
unforgettable moment of liberation leads to a series
of adventures that begin with his voyage to Africa.
“Twenty-one,” the first section, is devoted pri-
marily to accounts of Hughes’s family life, his ances-
try, childhood experiences of religion, early reading
life, time in Mexico with his father, and transition to
life at Columbia in New York City. The last lines of
“Beyond Sandy Hook,” the first story in the volume,
refer to Hughes’s distress that when he reached
Africa aboard the SS Malone,the “Africans looked at
me and would not believe I was a Negro.” Hughes
acknowledges this slight but in the next story reveals
that the Africans’ assessments are in fact correct.
“You see, unfortunately, I am not black,” he writes in
the opening lines of “Negro,” the second recollection
of The Big Sea.He then begins to outline his ancestry
and absorbing antebellum family history in the sec-
ond story. The genealogy and family lore that he
shares in “Negro” include details about Sheridan
Leary, his maternal grandmother’s first husband who
died alongside John Brown at the ill-fated 1859 raid
on Harper’s Ferry.
“Big Sea,” the second section, constitutes the
high adventure portion of the memoir. It is in this
portion of the book that Hughes resumes the story
of the SS Malonewith which he began the autobi-
ography. In “Africa,” the first chapter, he recalls his
observations about the symbolic and real implica-
tions of trade. “We brought machinery and tools,
canned goods, and Hollywood films,” he writes.
“We took away riches out of the earth, loaded by
human hands. We paid very little for the labor. We
paid but little more for the things we took away.Big Sea, The: An Autobiography 33