LITERATURE

"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.

The Weary Blues, 1926. 

LANGSTON HUGHES (1901 - 1967)

HUGHES, L. In: RAMPERSAD, A.; ROESSEL, D. (Ed.) The collected poems of Langston Hughes. New York: Knopf, 1994. 

CLICK HERE to listen to the poem.

CLICK HERE to listen to Hughes reading the poem.

“I, Too” is a poem by Langston Hughes. First published in 1926, during the height of the Harlem Renaissance, the poem portrays American racism as experienced by a black man. In the poem, white people deny the speaker a literal and metaphorical seat at the table. However, the speaker asserts that he is just as much as part of America as are white people, and that soon the rest of the country will be forced to acknowledge the beauty and strength of black people. 

“I, Too” Summary 

I also am part of America. 

I am a black member of the American family. They tell me I have to eat alone in the kitchen when they have people over for dinner. But I laugh at their hypocrisy, and eat heartily in order to grow stronger. 

In the future, I will sit at the table when they have people over for dinner. No one will dare to tell me that I have to eat alone in the kitchen then. 

And anyway, they’ll see that I’m beautiful then and they’ll feel ashamed of themselves. 

I also am American. 

“I, Too” Themes 

Racism and American Identity 

“I, Too” is a cry of protest against American racism. Its speaker, a black man, laments the way that he is excluded from American society — even though he is a key part of it. But, the speaker argues, black people have persevered — and will persevere — through the injustices of racism and segregation by developing a vibrant, beautiful, and independent cultural tradition, a cultural tradition so powerful that it will eventually compel white society to recognize black contributions to American life and history. 

Throughout the poem, the speaker insists that he is authentically American and that his community has made important contributions to American life. The speaker begins by announcing, “I, too, sing America”. This is an allusion to a poem by Walt Whitman, “I Hear America Singing”. In that poem, Whitman describes America as a song, which emerges from a diverse chorus of workers, farmers and industrial labors, women and men. 

However, Whitman notably does not include black people in his vision of American life. Even though the poem was written in 1855, just five years before the Civil War started, he doesn’t mention slavery at all. The speaker objects to Whitman’s poem, insisting that black people contribute to the American “song”: in other words, that black culture and black labor have been key to creating America. 

The poem argues that these contributions have been consciously erased by white people. In the poem’s second stanza, the speaker notes that he is forced to “eat in the kitchen / when company comes”. This is an extended metaphor for segregation. It describes the way that white people treat black people and black contributions to American culture. 

The speaker also suggests that white and black communities are quite intimate with each other. The speaker is “the darker brother” — in other words, he’s part of the same family — the American family — as the white people who force him to eat in the kitchen. Despite this intimacy, however, the white members of this metaphorical family force him out of view when other people are around, when they have “company”. In other words, the extended metaphor highlights the hypocrisy of white communities: even though white and black people are part of the same American family, white people exclude, neglect, and ignore black contributions to American history and culture. 

Despite being treated like a second-class citizen, the speaker responds to injustice by declaring that he will “laugh”, “eat well”, and “grow strong”. In other words, black people respond to racism and segregation by developing vibrant and independent cultural traditions. These traditions give them strength so that, in the future, white people will no longer be able to ignore their contributions to American culture — “they’ll see how beautiful I am”, the speaker announces in line 16. Further, as a result of this strength and beauty, white people will no longer be able to exclude the “darker brother” from the table. Segregation itself will break down. 

The poem thus argues that racism involves a willful refusal to acknowledge that black people as just as American as anyone else. And it argues that this refusal will eventually cause the collapse of racism. The poem encourages black people to persevere, to deepen and extend their contributions to American life and culture until those contributions are impossible to ignore. 

Available at: https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/langston-hughes/i-too. Accessed on September 27, 2020. 

MARQUES, A.: SANTOS, D. Links: English for Teens. 9º ano. 1 ed. São Paulo: Ática, 2009. p. 78.