Black Writers and the Left is a collection that examines the relationship between African American intellectuals and the American leftist movement in the first part of the twentieth century. Both literary study and cultural history, the collection contains previously unpublished interviews with Lorraine Hansberry's contemporaries and astonishing archival research into the life of Langston Hughes. Critical readings of figures like Dorothy West, Chester Himes and George Schulyer round out discussions of more prominent figures like Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright. Ultimately, Black Writers and the Left illuminates many of the nuances present in the fraught relationship between the African American literati, Marxism and one of the most influential political movements in twentieth century American history.