The student in Theme for English B
A twenty-two-year-old Black student questions what it means to write a truthful personal account.
The book
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeLangston Hughes’s unnamed student answers a writing assignment by examining race, place, and the relationship between learner and instructor.
How the book draws them
- A question about the assignmentThe instructor asks for a truthful page drawn from the student’s life. The student doubts that truth is so simple.
- A stated backgroundThe speaker is twenty-two and was born in Winston-Salem. The account describes schooling there and in Durham.
- A place in HarlemThe student traces a return from college to a room at the Harlem YMCA. Writing begins in a specific neighborhood.
- A range of interestsFood, love, work, reading, and different kinds of music enter the answer. Race alone cannot describe these tastes.
- A relationship with the teacherThe student argues that learner and instructor affect one another, even when either resists that connection.
- An unequal exchangeThe student acknowledges that the older white instructor has greater freedom. Mutual learning does not erase that difference.
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