Episode Two. Zohra Saed on Langston Hughs’s visit to Soviet Turkestan in 1932-1933

Central Asia Inside/Out

Langston Hughes, the American poet, and leader of the ‘black renaissance’ visited newly emerged Soviet Uzbekistan in the early thirties but not much of his written work has been left public for the international audience. Zohra Saed, an American researcher with a complex family history from Turkestan talks about her dissertation based on Langstone Hughes’ archival notebooks, poems, and photos from that trip. The episode highlights the personal story of Zohra as an inside-out researcher and her positioned investigation of Hughes' legacy.

Recommended literature:

Hughes, Langston. 1934. A Negro looks at Soviet Central Asia. Moscow: Co-operative Pub. Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R.

Langston Hughes: Poems, Photos & Notebooks from Turkestan

https://www.centerforthehumanities.org/lost-and-found/publications/langston-hughes-poems-photos-notebooks-from-turkestan?fbclid=IwAR0ebaXSmPZW4aYaFU8hAFSLrQ8S-jTFZnHhUQv6T1Ef-E4AV4iCWZL4sLo