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.
"Theme for English B," by Langston Hughes is a poem that his professor gave him an advice to help him to write. Hughes professor basically tells him to write a page and to let that page come out of him. In the first stanza Hughes wonders if it's that simple?writing poetry. As he writes from what is within himself, he free writes a poem about who he is and about how Harlem is him. Harlem, what he sees and hears is him.
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?
Hughes goes on to say he likes to eat,sleep, drink and be in love,and that he likes to work,read,learn and understand life. He goes on to say he'd like a pipe for Christmas or records, Bessie, Bop,or Bach. He goes on to say how he guesses him being colored doesn't make him not like things that other folks like who are different races. Here he comes to the realization that even though there is a color barrier between black and white folks, he may still like some of the things other people like just the same too. He names music artists. Music is universal, it's something everyone understands and gets no matter what color skin you have.He goes on to say that what he writes wont be white but it will be apart of his professor who is obviously white accounting for a line in the poem earlier where he stated he is the only colored person in his class.Hughes says
"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."

This poem will be apart of the instructor who is in part a part of him and vice versa. Hughes shows us here that they are two separate people, yet they are one. They have a commonality that they are both people, they are both American. He continues to say even though the instructor may not want to be apart of him and sometimes he may not want to be apart of the professor just the same, they are apart of each other. They are both American and they both learn in turn from each other even though his white instructor is older, white and freer than he is.He ends the poem with this is his page for English B. In this time the poem was written it was true that even though he had his freedom, he still was "less" free than a white man was.There was still a lot of segregation and hard times for black people still.