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    A Study Guide for Langston Hughes's "I, Too"
    A Study Guide for Langston Hughes's "I, Too"
    A Study Guide for Langston Hughes's "I, Too"
    Ebook36 pages20 minutes

    A Study Guide for Langston Hughes's "I, Too"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Langston Hughes's "I, Too," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateSep 2, 2016
    ISBN9781535825498
    A Study Guide for Langston Hughes's "I, Too"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Langston Hughes's "I, Too" - Gale

      08

      I, Too

      Langston Hughes

      1926

      Introduction

      I, Too was included in Langston Hughes's first collection of poetry, The Weary Blues, published in 1926. The poem reflects Hughes's dream that one day segregation will end. According to the poem, when that happens, all men, white and black, will sit together at the same table, sharing equally in the opportunities that the American dream offers. I, Too is a response to nineteenth-century American poet Walt Whitman's I Hear America Singing. Where Whitman rejoices in a country that offers him all that he wants, Hughes's poem makes clear that the United States does not provide a joyous experience for all its citizens. Hughes's poem is deceptively simple; its straightforward structure and deliberate choice of words suggest strength and determination. Hughes wrote I, Too in 1924 while stranded in Genoa, Italy, after his passport and wallet were stolen. Genoa had a busy port and Hughes tried to catch a ride back to the United States as a deckhand, but no ship would take him. After watching several white men easily get rides, Hughes wrote I, Too and mailed it to New York, hoping to sell the poem and make some money. There is no record of whether the poem brought Hughes any money, but the poem's theme of inequality reflects the world that Hughes saw around him, a world in which white sailors were free to refuse to serve with a black man, thus stranding him in Italy with no identification or money.

      I, Too is widely anthologized. In addition to its inclusion in The Weary Blues, it is included in such volumes as The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (1995), Langston Hughes: Poems (1999) and African American Literature: An Anthology of Nonfiction, Fiction, Poetry, and Drama (1993).

      Author Biography

      James Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, on February 1, 1902, to Carrie Langston and James Nathaniel Hughes. Hughes's father was unable to find steady employment in Joplin and, by the time his son was eighteen months old, he decided to move to Mexico to live. Hughes's mother refused to join her husband and began traveling from city to city looking

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