Langston Hughes offers a really insightful discussion on the impact that different aspects of life have on an individual through first person perspective of a speaker discussing and writing a take-home assignment. He discusses many relationships, including white vs black, teacher vs student, and reader vs poet. The structure of this poem is really unique, and creates contextual clarity that is sometimes omitted in poetry. It is shared that a student has an assignment from a teacher to “write true”. Yet, the speaker argues that the teacher doesn’t recognize the true difficulty of that assignment as there are unavoidable biases that mold everyone’s outlook on the world. The word choice of this poem allows readers to recognize the struggles the speaker has when trying to answer this question, as he writes down open-ended statements like “I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I can hear you; hear you, hear me — we too — you, me, talk on this page. (I hear New York, too.) Me — who?” He asks who he is, and starts to discuss the physical things that he likes (eating, sleeping, being in love). But then, he goes back on his previous statement and questions if his racial identity affects the things he likes and the things that white people don’t like. He even wonders if the page he is writing will be “colored”, insinuating that his writing will always be tainted with the experiences and stereotypes of a black person. A slight tone shift appears after this, as he seems to gain clarity on his understanding of the impact that humans and works of literature have on the world. He writes that the writing will be a part of the instructor (since the instructor influenced him), and because of this he will be a part of his white professor and his white professor will be a part of him. While some may frown at the thought of having a part of a black person in their being, it is inevitable to leave parts of yourself in the people that you interact with. He ends with saying that the teacher will learn from him even though the teacher is “more free” which hints at the hypocrisy a racist society has for claiming to be a “superior” race while also learning from marginalized groups.