First Impression of Wandering and Wondering

Just from the beginning of I Wonder as I Wander by Langston Hughes, I can tell I am going to love this book. We've read some poems by Hughes in class and of course he is an amazing writer. This is, of course, translated in his memoir. When we looked at him poems in class it was always just that - looking at his work and what it meant and what he meant and what it all meant but never who Langston Hughes was. My first impression from reading his memoir is that I can tell he's a person. A real, living, feeling person and not just a name below the title of a poem. After I read this memoir I can tell that I will have a different perspective on Hughes' writing and will definitely try to read more of his work to complement the memoir. He says himself that writing "put [his] inner emotions into exterior form, and gave [him] an outlet for words that never came into conversation"(3). This makes me even more interested in reading more of his poetry to see if I can recognize aspects from his life events and emotions reflected in his work.