Cora Unashamed is Langston Hughes's moving Depression-era story of an African American domestic--working in a stifling Midwestern household.

Set in the 1930s, the story takes place in the tiny town of Melton, Iowa, where the Jenkines live isolated lives as the community's only African Americans. Their precarious existence is supported solely by Cora's earnings as housekeeper to the Studevants.