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4.0 

I Wonder as I Wander

By Langston Hughes & Arnold Rampersad
I Wonder as I Wander by Langston Hughes & Arnold Rampersad digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

The most dramatic and intimate moments of Langston Hughes’s life in the turbulent 1930s. The second volume of his autobiography following The Big Sea.

Langston Hughes picks up where he left off in The Big Sea, which focused on his early life and involvement in the Harlem Renaissance. In this sequel, his wanderlust leads him to Cuba, Haiti, Russia, Soviet Central Asia, Japan, Spain (during its Civil War), through dictatorships, wars, revolutions. He meets and brings to life the famous and the humble, from Arthur Koestler to Emma, the Black Mammy of Moscow. It is the continuously amusing, wise revelation of an American writer journeying around the often strange and always exciting world he loves.

The Big Sea and I Wonder as I Wander are among the wisest, warmest and most informative books to issue from Langston’s pen, and by that to say from the Renaissance or any other literary movement.” —Amiri Baraka, former poet laureate of New Jersey and author of Black Music

“An immensely interesting book.” —The New Yorker

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13 Reviews

4.0
“I really enjoyed getting a peak behind the curtain that Langston Hughes left for us. He so beautifully wrote this travel blog in the 30s. I really enjoyed reading out loud to my mom what was then called Hampton Institute (her Alma Mater) and his time there as he traveled through the South reading his poems. Really living the dream, he stated multiple times his poems are by a black man for black people. The reader is able to wonder with him as he moved through Japan, Mexico, USSR, Spain (during the Spanish civil war), etc. He met so many poets, writers, artists, a famous boxer, to many to count. While also explaining how in some countries during that time race did/or did not matter. Not to mention the way he was able to pick up different languages. He traveled the way I would love to by getting in a country and totally immersing yourself in the culture. This was such a treat to read and an amazing insight in who was an amazing man.”
“This is one of those books that are like being in a conversation with an old friend. I always find it incredible to be inside the mind of someone long dead through the magic of a book. He was a truly special human being. His travels are real adventures through places and times never to come again. If you like travel memoirs you'll really like this. It's absolutely captivating!”

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