{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"148: Langston Hughes: "Theme for English B"","description":"This week on StoryWeb: Langston Hughes\u2019s poem \u201cTheme for English B.\u201d Oh, how I love this poem! It packs so much into a short space. Published on its own in 1949, it was included in Langston Hughes\u2019s 1951 collection, Montage of a Dream Deferred. Though it gains more resonance when taken with the entire collection of Hughes\u2019s bebop poetry, it also stands successfully on its own. In \u201cTheme for English B,\u201d Hughes imagines a 22-year-old black student\u2014a transplant from North Carolina \u2013 living at the Harlem Y and going to college. He is the only \u201ccolored\u201d student in his class at Columbia University, where Hughes himself had been a less-than-satisfied student in the 1920s. In the poem, Hughes plays with the idea of using writing \u2013 words on paper \u2013 as a tool to bridge racial, social, class, and educational differences. Through the \u201ctheme\u201d the young man is writing, his professor \u2013 white and well educated \u2013 has the opportunity to learn from his black, yet-to-be-fully-\u201ceducated\u201d student. Like so many other writing teachers, the professor tells his students to write what they know. He says: Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you \u2013 Then, it will be true. The student goes back to his room at the Y and writes his essay, naming things he likes, including music: \u201cBessie, bop, or Bach.\u201d Being black doesn\u2019t mean he doesn\u2019t like Bach, but there\u2019s a hint here that he may have even greater access to cultural experiences than the white professor, for the student has his foots in two worlds \u2013 the white university and Harlem. Though they are located right next to each other, they are nevertheless worlds apart. Or are they worlds apart? Hughes\u2019s poem seems to hold out the promise that through words on the page, the student and his professor can bridge the cultural, social, economic, perhaps even the racial chasm that would seem on the surface to separate them. Reflecting on his passions, the things that shape his identity, the student writes: I guess being colored doesn\u2019t 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. I especially love that Hughes seems to have Walt Whitman in mind. Just as Whitman imagined speaking to readers across time through his words on the page (in poems like \u201cCrossing Brooklyn Ferry\u201d), so, too, Hughes imagines written language as a vehicle to bridge gaps and allow us to learn about the seemingly unknowable \u201cother.\u201d The student says: I guess I\u2019m what I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you: hear you, hear me \u2013 we two \u2013 you, me, talk on this page. (I hear New York, too.) In some ways, as this student constructs a fledgling understanding of himself, as he imagines his identity into existence, the poem is an African American answer to Whitman\u2019s \u201cSong of Myself\u201d \u2013 the young black student \u201csinging\u201d his experiences. He makes clear that he and the professor are both American. The student says: You are white \u2013 yet a part of me, as I am a part of you. That\u2019s American. Sometimes perhaps you don\u2019t want to be a part of me. Nor do I often want to be a part of you. But we are, that\u2019s true! For ideas on teaching \u201cTheme for English B\u201d within the context of bebop music, an insurgent African American form of urban jazz, see Eric Otto\u2019s fine article in Teaching American Literature. And to explore many other resources related to Hughes and his poetry, visit the StoryWeb episode on Montage of a Dream Deferred, the collection in which \u201cTheme for English B\u201d appears. Visit thestoryweb.com\/theme for links to all these resources and to listen as Atlanta playwright Jermaine Ross reads Langston Hughes\u2019s poem \u201cTheme for English B.\u201d ","author_name":"StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups","author_url":"http:\/\/storyweb.libsyn.com\/webpage","html":"