I Wonder as I Wander

The poet Langston Hughes’s autobiography engagingly recounts his travels to Cuba, Haiti, Japan, and Spain during the Civil War. The book's centerpiece is his 1931-1932 trip to the Soviet Union. He visited as part of a contingent of twenty-two African Americans hired to make a film on race relations in the United States.

The film project never panned out, but Hughes took advantage of the situation to visit Soviet Central Asia. He understood that his hosts tried too hard to convince American visitors of the progress made under the Soviet regime. But his autobiography also conveys the wonderful strangeness of… show more.

Hughes gives poetic expression to his wanderlust as he charts his travels across Cuba, Haiti, Russia, Soviet Central Asia, and Spain. His observations about nation-states at war and in the throes of revolution remain urgent and timeless at the same time.

I read this book on an Amtrack train trip—with sleeping car and dining—across the United States, and it changed my perspective of the great expanses of land I passed through.

Hughes, whose poetry is standard fare in many American high schools, led an amazing, globetrotting life in the 1930s, which he details with a poet’s eye in this fascinating memoir.  Whether in Stalinist Russia with the famed novelist Arthur Koestler or in Madrid during the height of the Spanish Civil War, Hughes recounts his wanderings part wide-eyed, part coldly rational, but always with wit and panache. What makes this book so compelling is the casual acceptance of Hughes across Europe and West Asia, where the color of his skin rarely makes the slightest difference to those he encounters. Equally, Hughes… show more.