1. Read the poem 

  2. Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you

  3. Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…

  4. Use the selection of prompts below the poem

  5. Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…

  6. Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes

I, Too

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.

Langston Hughes
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47558/i-too


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Next Read Around is February 4, 2022 at 4:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

Hope was born in our constitution, a flickering flame that burned through fourscore and seven years, through civil war and on through the suffrage of women and the civil disobedience of the 60’s, and continues to burn today in the outrage over the killing of George Floyd, among so many others. America was founded on the principle that all people are created equal and that one people cannot kneel over the neck of another. At its best, America is known as a melting pot, expressed so eloquently in a line from Emma Lazarus’ poem inscribed on the Statue of liberty: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

I usually steer clear of political or controversial topics in my prompts. But this is Black History Month and the history of black people in America is a political history. Freedom is the great dream and, as Martin Luther King pointed out, freedom of one group on the back of another is not true freedom.  The last line in Langston Hughes’ poem, “I, too, am America” expresses this idea beautifully. The word, too, is the operative word here, which expresses inclusion, not exclusion. The melting pot is, in fact, the hope that fuels the flame of freedom; the hope that one day we all may breathe free, whether white, brown, yellow or black; that we all may stand up and sing to each other: “I, too, am America.”

Prompt Menu

  1. Use Langston hughes opening line— “I,too, sing America” —as your prompt. Journal or write what the song might say or what experience that song might evoke. Or use the ending line as yor prompt: I, too am America… and then free write from there.

  2. As a black man, Hughes describes himself and his people as the “darker brother” in America and then metaphorically exlicates what that means: not having a seat at the table. If you think of America as a family, where are you, or where is your “people”, in the family array? What experiences reflect that status?

  3. In what way have you been mistreated, but were able to laugh at it and grow strong from it?

  4. Langston uses the metaphor of a seat at the table for a level of belonging or being accepted. Journal or write about a time when you were able to take a seat at the table. Have you ever done so out of defiance? What happened that allowed you to join in?

  5. Journal or write a poem about a time when you, or someone, knowingly broke what you (or they) thought were unfair rules. What happened?

  6. journal or write about a time when you broke through your (or someone else broke through their) prejudices about another person or group of people and discovered their beauty.

  7. As usual, write about anything else from the poem or life that inspires you.