WHO ARE YOU?

Today, at the beginning of class we were surprised with a quiz on chapter 7 of the book we've been reading. At that moment, I was glad that I used my time at home wisely and annotated the chapters that I hadn't finished and then chapter 7. After the quiz, we were asked, "What do you consider your roots to be?" I thought it was a strange question at first because I assumed that all of our answers would be the same, but then I thought about it and realized that everyone is different regardless of their appearance. To my surprise, hardly anyone raised their hands. The teacher then asked us about our race, nationality, and ethnicity. Not many people knew what those words meant so he searched them up and told up what our answers should be. This brought us to our discussion about a poem titled "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" by Langston Hughes; a short poem about the long history of the black race. It was a challenge deciphering what Hughes meant, but we understood it after a moment of thought. It opened my eyes to how influential poems could be no matter how many words are written. Our last assignment was to add a line to Hughes poem including a river of our familiarity and using our knowledge of today's time. The line I wrote was "I grabbed the warm sun that rose over the Mobile River and felt its arms console me." The meaning of my line is that the people before us who fought for the unity and equality of blacks is the sun and my reaching out is the cry for help to bring back that unity among us today. I enjoyed the poem and hoped that there would be many more that we will discuss.