Princeton University Press has released Troubled Lands, a collection of short stories from Mexico and Cuba translated by Langston Hughes during his 1934-1935 stay in Mexico City. The anthology, edited by Ricardo Wilson II, presents the works for the first time as Hughes originally envisioned. The stories depict post-revolutionary Mexico and Cuba amid turbulent regimes.
In late 1934, Langston Hughes arrived in Mexico City, where he spent over five months translating short fiction by writers including Rafael Felipe Muñoz, Nellie Campobello, Lino Novás Calvo, Luis Felipe Rodríguez, Germán List Arzubide, Pablo de la Torriente-Brau, and Juan de la Cabada. These tales capture Mexico after its revolution and Cuba between the dictatorships of Gerardo Machado and Fulgencio Batista, focusing on themes of upheaval, sugarcane fields, Indigenous and Black characters, corrupt generals, and American imperialists—mostly left-leaning narratives reflective of the era's authors, as Hughes noted in letters to friends like Marie and Doug Short and Matt and Evelyn Crawford. He described being 'up to my neck' in translating around 30 stories, calling them 'swell' with plenty of Indian and Negro characters, and 'almost all the authors... left.' With assistance from Cuban journalist José Antonio Fernández de Castro, who sourced stories and aided translations, Hughes rented an apartment in Mexico City's Edificio Ermita to concentrate on the project. Despite his passion, agent Maxim Lieber dismissed the works, saying none could 'hold a candle' to Hughes, stalling publication. Hughes persisted, sending selections to Ralph Ellison in 1942, but McCarthyism later muted such radical efforts. Troubled Lands now fulfills Hughes's vision amid today's authoritarian concerns, as highlighted in editor Ricardo Wilson II's introduction. Hughes's Mexican ties ran deep: his father settled there fleeing U.S. racism, prompting family visits in 1907 and Hughes's own stays in 1919-1920 and 1934 after his father's death. These inspired early poems like 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers' and ties to Black literary figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois.
