How to Write a “True” Essay about Lit

Langston Hughes, by Winold Reiss

Langston Hughes, by Winold Reiss

When I wasn’t teaching class yesterday, I was continuing my marathon essay-grading session. I took a break to write today’s post, however, and used a well-known poem by Langston Hughes to reflect on what I was asking my students to do.

In “Theme for English B,” the only black student in a college composition course is sitting down to write an essay that is supposed to “come out of you.”  If it does, it will be “true.” I can’t begin to do justice to the poem: Hughes’ brilliant light touch gets at a host of related issues, including black-white relations, power dynamics in a class, the dangers of stereotyping, and basic questions of identity.

I identify with the professor in the poem, who would have been enlightened for 1951. I don’t give my students his particular assignment but I understand what he wants: writing that is authentic, not essays written “for the teacher.” In my case, I tell my students that there must be something “at stake” in what they write. Hughes’ self-conscious student, however, wonders how easy this is. After all, he is the only black in the class, he’s writing for a white teacher who is “somewhat more free,” he may not fit into the teacher’s racial stereotypes, the teacher might not like the “you” that comes out of him, and so on.

Here’s the poem, followed by some thoughts:


Theme for English B

By Langston Hughes

The instructor said,

Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you–
Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it’s that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me–we two–you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York, too.) Me–who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records–Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn’t make me
not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?

Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white–
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That’s American.
Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that’s true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me–
although you’re older–and white–
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

I love the way that, in questioning the assignment, the student begins to find his identity and produces what is, in fact, a “true” piece of writing. I’m interested in the grade he would get.

The poem also gets me to question my own assignments. I am intensely aware of the contradictions involved. I am asking my students to write an essay that is meaningful but whose meaningfulness will be assessed and graded by a teacher. They have to trust my invitation and I have to prove that I am worthy of their trust. It is a charged relationship and I’m aware that, no matter how sensitive I try to be, my responses may not be adequate to the occasion.

Here’s an example that currently is giving me pause. A student who unexpectedly lost his father two or three years ago has discovered images in some Henry Vaughan poems that describe his depression. (“Silence, and Stealth of Days” is about the death of Vaughan’s brother, and “They Are All Gone into the World of Light!” probably has that death in mind as well.) Now, my student doesn’t seem to be particularly religious so the 17th-century poet’s religious consolations don’t directly apply. But then, those consolations don’t entirely work with Vaughan either, who struggles with his faith. In any event, my student has accepted my invitation to write about something meaningful.

But in its present manifestation, the essay is incoherent and disorganized, and I have to tell him this (and bestow a grade as well). On the plus side, I see great potential in the essay. In fact, I believe that, if he revises it, the student will simultaneously move more deeply into Vaughan’s vision and arrive at a more powerful articulation of the dark journey he has had to undergo. To put it crassly, the essay could support powerful healing and receive an A.

I will advise him to separate his story from his interpretation—generally I suggest introduction and conclusion for personal issues and the body of the essay for literary analysis—even as I know full well that the two will inform each other. That is to say, having suffered a heart-breaking loss will give him special insight into the poem, and the poem will allow him to step outside his own experience and see himself, as it were, from the outside.

I know this possibility exists, in part because I have seen it happen with other students (here’s an example), in part because, when I lost my own son, a close textual reading of Beowulf provided some consolation. I’ve written on this elsewhere so I won’t go into detail here. I’ll just say that Beowulf’s battle with a grieving Grendel’s mother gave my own experience with grief a shape and a texture. Suddenly I saw myself as a hero on a quest, pulled into a dark mire and wrestling with depression.

But to return to the issue at hand, I must honor the confidence that the student has placed in me, even as I assess the essay on its merits. The task is not easy and I may fall short. But my invitation that he be true has made literature for him a place where he can examine life’s biggest questions.  If that’s what he takes from the class, then I can only say, “Wow!”

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