Back to school
Langston Hughes, 'Theme for English B'
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
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.
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—
and somewhat more free.
This is my page for English B.
About the author
Langston Hughes (1901-67) was an American poet, novelist, playwright, and civil rights activist who was a leading member of the Harlem Renaissance.
To read alongside...
African-American writer Phillis Wheatley's 1771 poem 'To the University of Cambridge, in New-England' offers advice to Harvard undergraduates:
Students, to you ’tis giv’n to scan the heights
Above, to traverse the ethereal space,
And mark the systems of revolving worlds.
Still more, ye sons of science ye receive
The blissful news by messengers from heav’n,
Hughes writes of himself learning from a white teacher, but here Wheatley, self-professedly 'An Ethiop', has advice for the white (male) students of Harvard. Hughes's poem also makes us think of the 'literacy scene' in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, when Douglass realizes the power of the written word when his master harshly reprimands his own wife for teaching Douglass how to read. Hughes seems to see learning as something subtly empowering ('As I learn from you, | I guess you learn from me'), and in Douglass's account learning and literacy are pivotal to his awakening and his commitment to freedom and resistance.
Hughes's poem conveys the racial politics of a classroom in New York in the 1920s. It's illuminating to set it alongside this passage about returning to school after the summer vacation, from L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables:
'Anne had the golden summer of her life as far as freedom and frolic went. She walked, rowed, berried, and dreamed to her heart’s content; and when September came she was bright-eyed and alert, with a step that would have satisfied the Spencervale doctor and a heart full of ambition and zest once more.
“I feel just like studying with might and main,” she declared as she brought her books down from the attic. “Oh, you good old friends, I’m glad to see your honest faces once more—yes, even you, geometry. I’ve had a perfectly beautiful summer, and now I’m rejoicing as a strong man to run a race."
And finally: in his poem, Hughes gives a student's perspective...but what about the teacher? 'The true teacher,' wrote Bronson Alcott (father of Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women), 'defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-trust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciple.' Another Victorian, Henry Adams, opined that 'A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.'
We'd love to hear your views on what makes a great teacher--please email us, and feel free to suggest more teacher/student/school-related literary excerpts!
Curators' Corner
We want to thank our guest curator, Jacky, Ho Lung Chan, for his input in this week's newsletter. Jacky is in his final year studying English at the University of Oxford and a volunteer with LitHits.
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