Troubled Lands

Stories of Mexico and Cuba as Translated by Langston Hughes

Ricardo Wilson, Ricardo Wilson II

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9780691268422
  9780691268415
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691286907
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Mexican History
• Index: Literature

A landmark book—the first complete publication of Langston Hughes’s translations of thirty-three stories by eighteen Mexican and Cuban writers

In late 1934, Langston Hughes, already established as a leading voice of literary Black America, traveled to Mexico City, where he stayed for more than five months and began translating short fiction by prominent Mexican and Cuban writers. These stories, as he wrote to a friend, explore “the revolutions and uprisings, sugar cane, Negroes, Indians, corrupt generals, [and] American imperialists,” and are “mostly all left stories, because practically all the writers down here are left these days.” But when Hughes proposed publishing the stories as a book, to be titled Troubled Lands, his agent discouraged him from further pursuing the project and it remained unpublished, until now, with only a handful of the translations making their way into contemporary magazines. This volume presents Hughes’s translations of these stories together for the first time as he originally envisioned. Edited by Ricardo Wilson, the book also features an introduction and brief biographies of the included writers.

Troubled Lands features thirty-three stories by eighteen 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. The collection depicts Mexico in the wake of its revolution and Cuba in the years between the brutal regimes of Machado and Batista.

Hughes was a noted translator of poetry, but his commitment to translating fiction is less well known. Troubled Lands provides a window into this important dimension of his work and illuminates his deep interest in Mexico and Cuba.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Editor’s Note
• Rafael Felipe Muñoz
• Leví Marrero
• Pablo de la Torriente-Brau
• Cipriano Campos Alatorre
• Arturo Ramírez
• Manuel Siré Valenciano
• Gerardo del Valle
• Luis Felipe Rodríguez
• Nellie Campobello
• Rubén Salazar Mallén
• Marcelo Salinas
• Gonzalo Mazas Garbayo
• José Mancisidor
• Juan de la Cabada
• Antonio Acevedo Escobedo
• Francisco Rojas González
• Germán List Arzubide
• Lino Novás Calvo
• Appendix
• Notes on the Introduction
• Authors
• Publication History of Selected Stories