First Read this famous essay carefully and keep notes on al

First :

Read this famous essay carefully and keep notes on all the important ideas that emerge. Here are a few considerations for this essay:

What do you think is the main idea in Amy Tan\'s essay?  
How does Amy Tan develop this important idea in her essay? What kinds of details does she use and what is the effect they have on the reader?

Would you say Amy Tan\'s essay is an exploration? Of what exactly? Or is it an explanation? Of what? In other words, where do you think Amy Tan practices \'exploration\' and why, and where does she provide explanations and why?

How do you feel about the topic of Amy Tan\'s essay? [The topic of language and identity...]

link : http://docdro.id/YbImoLg

Second :

Read this famous poem by Langston Hughes and consider the following:

What do you think is the theme of this poem? Is it an important theme? How does the poet develop his theme in this poem?

Try to find some information about Langston Hughes -you can check Wikipedia. After reading some biographical background about Langston Hughes what do you think about this poem? Do you feel that the theme of this poem is one that people nowadays can still relate to? Why?

Link: http://docdro.id/rjc5oIl

Thank you ...

Solution

Langston Hughes’ poem “Theme for English B” is a thought provoking poem. When first approached, the poem seems to be for the black reader; however, it really speaks to the white man. Published in 1949, it addresses the problems faced by young adults who wanted a college education.

Of course, this problem later came to the forefront in the 1950s and 1960s. The black students wanted an education just like the whites. The poem dates itself through the use of the word “colored” which is nomenclature that is no used.

This is poem that speaks volumes to loneliness and isolation. The narration is first person point of view with a black student acting as the narrator. This student feels quite alone as he enters a class in a New York college as the only one of his race in the clas

The teacher gives an intriguing assignment:

Go home and write

A page tonight,

And let that page come out of you—

Then, it will be true.

The reader and the audience for the essay will be the teacher.

Then he gives pertinent information about himself:

As an imagist, Hughes describes the path of the student as he makes his way back to his room at the YMCA. It will be there that he responds to the teacher’s assignment.

He begins by speaking to the teacher. How do either of them know what is true for the other? The boy is only 22 years old and unsure of who he is.

In his mind, he hears the sounds around him that are typical of Harlem. The poet mimics its rhythm:

I hear you: hear you, hear me—we two—you, me. talk on this page. ( I hear New York, too.) Me—who?

Then he begins to describe himself which most importantly speaks to his love for learning. This is an intelligent, sensitive, yet typical guy for his age. He has a work ethic, wants a pipe for Christmas [possibly to look older] and lots of music. He also comments on the fact that just because he is black does not mean that does not like the same things that white people do.

Then the author writes the most clever and beautiful metaphor in the poem:

So will my page be colored that I write?

Being me, it will not be white.

The blank white paper stands for the quality of being white; the writing over it constitutes the aspect of being colored. Thus each aspect complements the other lending significance to the writer and what he writes.

Hughes defines what he hopes one day will be the definition of an American: Because the instructor and the student share a common bond, the English class, they have become a part of each other. The teacher is white, so he is a part of the student. The student is black, then he is a part of the teacher. That is what it means to be an American.

The student has a question in his mind about the teacher actually wanting to be a part of him; and he admits that he does not really want to be a part of the instructor.

Describing the teacher as older and white and in those days certainly more free…This is what the student handed in for his theme for English B. The final line is full of irony. Although the student is the lone black in the class, his desire to learn and achieve makes his strong in his representation of his race.