I, Too

I, Too, Sing America by Langston Hughes
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 selected the poem I, Too by Langston Hughes because I thought it had a lot of emotion behind. I liked the fact that he put his point so bluntly in his poem. The way it is put together it forces the reader to slow down and really read the poem. It doesn’t have as many visual aspects to it as Alone by Maya Angelou, but it has the emotion behind it to bring it to life.
What I think that most impressive about this poem is how blunt he is at the very beginning of his poem. (I am the darker brother/ They send me to eat in the kitchen). This shows the discrimination that blacks suffered from whites at the time he wrote this poem. That he knows that there’s going to be a day that he won’t have to sit in another area or in this case the kitchen. There will be a day that he will get to have the same opportunity as the whites. They won’t look down on him, but on the same leave as everyone else. There is no reason for him to be ashamed of the color of his skin. I really liked how he ended his poem that “I, too, am American” and that makes him the same as everyone else in America.