The line about eating in the kitchen when company comes appears in which Hughes poem?

The line about eating in the kitchen when company comes appears in which Hughes poem?

• A. The Negro Speaks of Rivers
• B. I, Too
• C. The Weary Blues
• D. Not Without Laughter

Answer: (B)

The line about eating in the kitchen when company comes highlights the tension between segregation and eventual equality. In the short poem I, Too, Hughes uses this everyday domestic moment to show how Black Americans are marginalized in daily life, kept separate from the table of full social participation. Yet the voice is calm and resolute, beginning with that exclusion and swelling into a confident vow of belonging: I, too, sing America, and tomorrow I’ll be at the table. The image becomes a powerful symbol of dignity and the belief that equality will come, transforming shame into pride. That line isn’t found in Hughes’s other works listed here—the poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers moves through ancestry and memory; The Weary Blues centers on a blues performer and mood; Not Without Laughter is a novel. The line belongs to I, Too.

The line about eating in the kitchen when company comes highlights the tension between segregation and eventual equality. In the short poem I, Too, Hughes uses this everyday domestic moment to show how Black Americans are marginalized in daily life, kept separate from the table of full social participation. Yet the voice is calm and resolute, beginning with that exclusion and swelling into a confident vow of belonging: I, too, sing America, and tomorrow I’ll be at the table. The image becomes a powerful symbol of dignity and the belief that equality will come, transforming shame into pride.

That line isn’t found in Hughes’s other works listed here—the poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers moves through ancestry and memory; The Weary Blues centers on a blues performer and mood; Not Without Laughter is a novel. The line belongs to I, Too.