Perspectives

To put the text in perspective means to correlate a literary work like “I, Too” by Langston Hughes with the greater context in which it was written, such as the literary movement or similar works.

The literary period

Langston Hughes belongs to a Modernist movement called the Harlem Renaissance, which has innovated African-American literature by combining elements of African-American culture such as jazz with poetry or by depicting issues related to the black population in the US.

Other texts by the same author

Langston Hughes has written numerous poems and short stories dealing with African-American culture and the status of the US black population in the interwar period and afterward. We recommend that you also try reading some of his short stories which deal with discrimination.

“Tales of Simple: Coffee Break” (1965) explores the issue of discrimination forty years after the poem “I, Too” was written, in the context of the African-American movement for Civil Rights. You will notice that, forty years later, the ...