Langston Hughes (1902–1967) was born in the African American community of Joplin, Missouri, and raised in Lawrence, Kansas. He spent a year at Columbia University and became involved with the Harlem movement, but he was shocked by the endemic racial prejudice at the university and subsequently left. Hughes traveled for several years, spending some time in Paris before returning to the United States. He completed his BA at Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University in 1929, after which he returned to Harlem for the remainder of his life. A writer of verse, prose, and drama, Hughes’s first volume of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published in 1926. This collection contained “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (p. 1101), perhaps his most famous poem. His first novel, Not Without Laughter (1930), won the Harmon Gold Medal for literature. Hughes is remembered for his celebration of the uniqueness of African American culture, which found expression in “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (p. 1102), published in the Nation, and in the poem “My People.” He also wrote children’s poetry, musicals, and opera.
Theme for English B
Hughes wrote “Theme for English B” in 1951—more than twenty-five years after he had been a student at New York’s Columbia University.
The instructor said,
Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you—
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Then, it will be true.
I wonder if it’s that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
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I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
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up to my room, sit down, and write this page:
It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page.
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(I hear New York, too.) Me—who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach.
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I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
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a part of you, instructor.
You are white—
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That’s American.
Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.
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Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that’s true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me—
although you’re older—and white—
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and somewhat more free.
This is my page for English B.
(1951)