Hughes selected this volume himself from the stories of Jesse B. Semple — "Simple" — the Harlem everyman he had been writing in his Chicago Defender column since the 1940s and in three earlier collections. In barstool conversations with the narrator, a college-educated foil, Simple talks his way through work, rent, women, war, and race in America with humor that lands its serious points sideways. It remains the standard single-volume entry to the Simple stories.
Author: Langston Hughes · Original publisher: Hill and Wang (New York), 1961
