Online Texts for Craig White's Literature Courses
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Not a critical or scholarly text but a reading text for a seminar
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Langston Hughes (1902-67) I Too Sing America (1945) |
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I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--
I, too, am America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--
I, too, am America.
cf Walt Whitman, Song of Myself (1855+)
line 1: "I celebrate myself, and sing myself . . . "
Whitman widely recognized as "greatest American poet"--Hughes as "the Whitman of African America"
cf. Frederick Douglass as "the Lincoln of African America"