The Storm

Langston Hughes, in Not Without Laughter, demonstrates the ability to draw a perfect picture. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, chapter 1 under 1,000 words could not be capture in a single picture. The five senses of the readers are heavily drawn upon, "the air was very still and yellow" (p. 19), creating an experience beyond your typical experience. How many of us are that in tune with our senses that we can draw on each of them with such command? Most of the time in order for us to draw on our sense of smell, we require an unusual or significantly different smell. The descriptions encountered in this first chapter remind me of two recent books I have read, The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy) and The Inheritance of Loss (Kiran Desai). The next two chapters (3-4) are rather insignificant in comparison artistically, however, if they were the beginning of the book I do not feel I would continue reading.