I, Too, Sing America: The Story of Langston Hughes Book

The book I choose for my biography genre was I, Too, Sing America, it was about Langston Hughes. The book did a real good job of telling his life story. The book hit every aspect of his life from his birth to his death. I thought I knew a lot about Langston Hughes, but the book opened up a lot about him that I did not know. I read his poetry a lot and I would always come across his poems about sailors. Then when I read the book I found it he was a merchant marine, so it would make sense that he would write those poems. The book also did a real good job of telling the reader who he collaborated with and who helped him out through his life. Carter G. Woodson used to have him work as his assistant and Alain Locke tried to get Langston Hughes to be his successor. The book also did a real good job of telling why he stopped writing in the persona of Jesse B. Simple. I used to talk to my father about that persona when I was younger because he had some books Hughes had written in that persona and could never tell me why he stopped writing. He stopped writing because he said, "People have become too radical and serious. They do not understand irony anymore". I thought that was a real shame because that persona was one of his better works. The structure of the book was also was setup very uniquely. Every chapter was named after some work that he had published or written, and at the end of the book it tells you what work the title came from. This book is put together very well and I would recommend it for any teacher in 6th to 8th grade to give their students to read.
Teachers ought to have their students read this book about Langston Hughes because it provides a lot of valuable information. It tells them about the Harlem Renaissance. This was an important time for African Americans and this is how Langston Hughes really made a name for himself. It tells students about the people that influenced Langston Hughes, and those names range from W.E.B. Dubois to Walt Whitman. The book also goes into the civil rights era and the important figures during that time. The book does a real good job of going through these time periods and how Langston Hughes navigated the waters during these time periods because life for him was not always easy. I, Too, Sing America is a must read and any student or teacher who picks it up and reads well be better off having done so.