This just got sent to me, and it seems so fitting for Thanksgiving this year–a poem, by Langston Hughes:
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, 1925
See also Hughes’ “Let America Be America Again”. And thank you, Jessie, for sending these! Here’s wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving, filled with stuffing and gratitude and love. Me? I’ll be stuffing myself with my Jewish family, on the holiday few in my family this year feel ambivalent about. Well, I always feel ambivalent about the turkeys, but that’s just the guilty carnivore in me. Today, my parents get to meet their grandkitten! Off to bake the pies…
Comments
anniegirl1138 — November 26, 2008
Enjoy the holiday. Great poems.
Bob Lamm — December 1, 2008
Thank you, Deborah, for sharing these wonderful poems from the great Langston Hughes. I only wish that Hughes and the other giants of the Harlem Renaissance could be alive today to see an African American becoming president of the United States.
As for the discussion of America in these two memorable poems... I'd much rather live in the America of Langston Hughes (or Barack Obama) than live among the "real Americans" who were praised and targeted by John McCain and Sarah Palin.
gwp_admin — December 1, 2008
Testing testing - we hear comments on this one have not been getting through. Test test