A review by johnaggreyodera
The Big Sea by Langston Hughes, Arnold Rampersad

4.0

I read this for the first time in my first month of college (also my first month in America as an adult). I think Hughes' reflections about blackness generally - and its intersections with sexuality, class, skin tone, nationality (especially this one) etc. were pretty interesting to me because of my then recent move to the US. He had spent his entire life not being able to forget for a moment that he was black, and here he was, in Africa, where everyone was black, yet his first signifier was "foreigner" - no one thought about him as black. That heightened his sense of alienation, both as a man trying to come to terms with his place in the world generally, but also, like most displaced people, as someone who realised that the people in a place he had considered home (Africa generally) did not consider him a brother. I, on the other hand, had spent my entire life in Kenya not even thinking about my blackness, and here in America, I was both foreigner and black. Yet for all useful concerns, I was simply black. I had never for a moment thought of America as my home, but, because of the way I look, I had instantly been forced to identify with some of its people - to see them as my people.