I, Too, Am America

I, Too, Am America Poem by Langston Hughes, Illustrations by Brian Collier

Simon and Shuster   2012

For our purposes, let’s start at the back of the book and refer to the illustrator’s notes. The poem is written in a collective voice in which the narrator’s identity is not specified. Collier’s execution of the artwork provides a fantastic example of using cross curricular connections to link the text of the poem to African American history.

He highlights the practice of Pullman porters collecting newspapers, magazines, and blues & jazz records that were left behind by passengers in order to toss them out of the last car of the train so that people who could not afford or otherwise obtain these items could access them.

This practice became the central metaphor for Collier’s treatment of the poem. The items that the Pullman porters gather travel through time and space across the deep South of the time to contemporary New York as a reflection of the progress that has been made. Regardless of time or distance, the recipients are elated to receive the objects and the messages that they contain.    

In another historical parallel, the objects that the Pullman porters release follow the trajectory of the Great Migration. This book would be an ideal match for Jacob Lawrence’s Great Migration book and The Jerry Pickney illustrated “God Bless The Child”.

Another use for this book would be to have this as a template for students' artistic interpretation of the poem. Who would they pick as their narrators, and how would their sentiments be expressed artistically? Those are very interesting questions.