i wonder as i wander an autobiographical journey

Henry Lee Moon, the NAACP's director of public relations for nearly two decades, was the organization's powerful and influential voice during 'its most turbulent years, when it was campaigning to rid the country of discriminatory laws' ( New York Times).

'An immensely interesting book' ( New Yorker), I Wonder as I Wander was praised by noted author Amiri Baraka as 'among the wisest and most informative books to issue from Langston's pen.' First edition, first printing: colophon with circled 'R' on copyright page. He had weighed it as carefully as if it were his newborn baby-seven pounds, eight ounces… a job well done.' In 1956 'the happy publication of I Wonder as I Wander… seemed to lift a staggering burden from Langston's shoulders' (Rampersad, Life, 249-61). That November he 'delivered the manuscript, amounting to 789 pages, of I Wonder as I Wander.

Hughes began work on it in July 1954 and, after a short break, returned to it in May 1955. In I Wonder as I Wander, Hughes' second and final autobiography, he vividly recalls the turbulent 1930s and his travels across the globe, from Harlem to Russia, to Cuba, Haiti, Japan, and Spain during its Civil War. As one of his biographers observed, in 'a career which covered four decades, in which he tried every literary genre, he wrote some of the most revolutionary works by any American writer of his generation' (Faith Berry). Langston Hughes remains 'one of America's most influential voices… his value to the development of African American and American art and culture has been inestimable' (Tidwell and Raga, Montage of a Dream, 1). Octavo, original gray cloth, original dust jacket.įirst edition of one of Hughes' 'wisest and most informative books,' the second and final volume of his autobiography, a major presentation/association copy that brings together three core figures in the history of American civil rights, inscribed by Hughes in the year of publication to Henry Lee Moon, NAACP's longtime influential director of public relations, and his wife, Mollie Lewis Moon, founder and president of the National Urban League, with Hughes' warm inscription in his trademark green ink, 'Especially for Henry and Mollie who lived half of this book (and more) with me. 'ESPECIALLY FOR HENRY AND MOLLIE WHO LIVED HALF OF THIS BOOK (AMD MORE) WITH ME': IMPORTANT PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION FIRST EDITION OF I WONDER AS I WANDER, INSCRIBED BY LANGSTON HUGHES IN THE YEAR OF PUBLICATION TO NAACP DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC RELATIONS AND HIS WIFE, FOUNDING HEAD OF THE NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE

I wonder as i wander an autobiographical journey