[The letters in "Arna Bontemps—Langston Hughes Letters 1925–1967"] were written without any awareness that they might be read by white readers. Thus they offer the general reader a rare glimpse into the candid communication between black friends. They are filled with wry comments on the ways of "white folks" and the "cullud race."…

Because Hughes and Bontemps were so close as friends, they left much unsaid. Their problems with white people on whom they depended—agents, editors, publishers, producers, directors—required only a word or two to evoke the knowing response. In the same way, the humiliation they both endured in the Jim Crow South is seldom made explicit….

Hughes and Bontemps were gentle men, inclined to amusement rather than anger; they were neither gossips, nor critics, nor mean….

The most telling revelation in these letters is how much easier it is for a black writer to make...