In Langston Hughes poem "Theme For English B," Hughes recalls a time when a professor assigned a page that was to "come out of you- / Then it will be true." Hughes, "twenty-two, colored and born in Winston-Salem" was uncomfortable with the assignment at first, being the only black student in the class. He writes about all the things he likes "eat, sleep, drink, and to be in love" and how being colored doesn't "make him not like the same things other folks like." However, he asks the question "So will my page be colored that I write." Hughes is concerned that the white professor will not be able to relate to his paper, "Being me it will not be white." Yet Hughes brings up the point that they share a similarity in that the professor and himself are both "American." Hughes also writes "As I learn from you, / I guess you learn from me" describing how ulti

In the Chinese culture it is believed that a "ready tongue is an evil tongue." However, Kingston mother tells her that "things are different in this ghost country." When Kingston first entered school she was very silent. "It wasn't until I found out that I had to talk that school became a misery, that the silence became a misery." Writes Kingston. Eventually Kingston spoke with "the barest whisper" only to have the teacher "scare the voice away again." She was content with herself though, for "the other Chinese girls did not talk either, so I knew the silence had to do with being a Chinese girl." Kingston remembers how all the children would go to the auditorium "except the Chinese girls... for our voices were too soft or nonexistent." Kingston felt that she and the other Chinese girls in the class had "invented an American-feminine speaking personality..."

mately his paper is a part of both himself and the instructor. For what was supposed to be a "simple" assignment, Hughes tries to discover his own truth in a white society.

Similarly the idea of ethnocentrism is discussed in Edite Cunha Pedrosa's "Talking in the New Land." Pedrosa at the age of seven remembers her family moving f

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Approximate Word count = 810
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)