I, Too BY LANGSTON HUGHES , short summary and analysis.

 I, Too

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.

Short summary and analysis 

* “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.

* “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.

* In the poem  the speaker argues that , 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.

* 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.

* 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.”

* 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 native 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.

Themes 

* The Shamefulness of Racism

One key theme of “I, Too” is the shamefulness of racism. A lot of poetry and fiction in American literature have explored themes related to the shame that racism causes for its victims. 

Here, the speaker imagines that by asserting his own value, he will force the white family he serves to see him as more fully human and to treat him as their equal.

 It’s at precisely this point that the theme of shame emerges. The speaker posits that when he affirms his own intrinsic value, the white family will be forced to confront their racism directly and see the harm it has done.

* The Power of Self-Confidence

Despite occupying an inferior position in the white household where he works, the speaker actively cultivates his self-confidence. 

The speaker suggests as much in the second stanza, where he describes how he resists the frustration of being confined to the kitchen when company comes. Defiantly, he says: “But I laugh, / And eat well, / And grow strong”.

* Hope for the better life. 

The speaker of “I, Too” understands that America has a deep racial divide, but he also implies that, despite their differences, the American people still constitute one nation. 

As a Black man who works as a servant in a white household, the speaker has personal experience of America’s racial division. But despite being treated like a second-class citizen, he doesn’t reject the nation that has long excluded him. Instead, he holds firm to his belief in America’s value and in his ability to contribute to that value.