Jason Reynolds: ‘Libraries are places for dancing and for self-expression.’

The author talks about his new book, ‘There Was a Party for Langston,’ and its celebration of books and Black literature.

His book was inspired by some famous library-dancers: the poets Maya Angelou and Amiri Baraka. In 1991, the pair bopped at an event celebrating the opening of the Langston Hughes Auditorium at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, a moment captured in an unforgettable photograph by Chester Higgins Jr. “There Was a Party for Langston,” Reynolds’s first traditional picture book, sprung from that image.