The same things other folks like who are other races. I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like I like to work, read, learn, and understand life. Later, with inch-thick specs, Evil was just my lark: Me and my cloak and fangs.
To know I could still keep cool, And deal out the old right hook. Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. Cured most things short of school, It was worth ruining my eyes. Hear you, hear me-we two-you, me, talk on this page. I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you. It’s not easy to know what is true for you or meĪt twenty-two, my age. Up to my room, sit down, and write this page: The Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator Nicholas,Įighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y, The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem, I am the only colored student in my class. To this college on the hill above Harlem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. What’s more, Hughes’ poem has an uncharacteristically optimistic tone as it suggests that education holds great unifying potential, allowing students to connect through their shared desire to learn and understand life. This message deeply chimes with the aims of our mentoring approach at ITG, where we hope to inspire students to foster critical thinking and an inquisitive nature. We have chosen English B as our ‘Poem of the Week’ because it beautifully encapsulates the idea that the classroom is the perfect place to start asking questions about who you are, who you want to become and where you belong in the world. However, the speaker soon finds similarities between himself and his peers while realising that through their differences, he and his teacher can learn from one another. The teacher sets the students a page-long writing assignment with the caveat that the response must “be true.” Such an assignment causes the speaker to meditate on his own identity which he sees as wildly different from his peers and teacher because of his race and background. Theme for English B is one of Hughes’s most loved poems that documents the reflections of “the only coloured student” in a class.
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