ABSTRACT
What needs to be reopen d in this claim about Hughes's own textualization of his life is the premise that Peter Pan is what Langston H ghes w nted to be. Reading Peter Pan, instead, as a drag performance enables us to see th t such a strategy do s more th n one thing for t e author. Playing Peter Pan enables Hughes to fool som of the people some f the time, most particularly the people i his reading audience a t very badly t be fooled, and this would include many in Hughes's contemporary audience as well as late twentiethc ntury readers who want thei Langston Hughes to be lovable and uncomplica d. Playing Peter Pan also enables him to play-to tease the reader wi h sexual innuendo, ventriloquism, a d coyness without being caught by literalism. Most cruci ly, perhaps, playing P ter Pan allows Hughes to retain c trol of hi own rep esentation of his sexuality in the face of pressures, both heterosexual and homosexual, to be definitive about it. If he is to respond to pressures to write autobiography to make money-to auction himself in the marketplace-and to " atisfy" Carl Van Vec ten, he will do so on his own terms and in his own version of drag.
