 1st Edition Cover | |
| Author | Langston Hughes |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Poetry |
| Published | 1927 |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf |
Fine Clothes to the Jew is a 1927 poetry collection by Langston Hughes published by Alfred A. Knopf. Because it departed from sentimental depictions of African-American culture, the collection was widely criticized, especially in the Black press, when it was published. [1]
The title appears in the poem "Hard Luck" in the book's first section. [2] It refers to a phrase popular in Harlem at the time, referring to citizens who would pawn fine clothes to predominantly Jewish-owned pawn shops when they were short on money. [3]
The collection was Hughes' least successful in terms of both sales and critical reception. [4] However, his first work The Weary Blues and this collection made his reputation. [5] Biographer Arnold Rampersad called it Hughes' "most brilliant book of poems." [6]
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In terms of current Afro-American popular music and the sources from which it progressed—jazz, ragtime, swing, blues, boogie-woogie, and be-bop—this poem on contemporary Harlem, like be-bop, is marked by conflicting changes, sudden nuances, sharp and impudent interjections, broken rhythms, and passages sometimes in the manner of a jam session, sometimes the popular song, punctuated by the riffs, runs, breaks, and disc-tortions of the music of a community in transition.
"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" is a poem by American writer Langston Hughes. Hughes wrote the poem when he was 17 and crossing the Mississippi River on the way to visit his father in Mexico. It was first published the following year in The Crisis, starting Hughes's literary career. "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" uses rivers as a metaphor for Hughes's life and the broader African-American experience. It has been reprinted often and is considered one of Hughes's most famous and signature works.
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The Sweet Flypaper of Life is a 1955 fiction and photography book by American photographer Roy DeCarava and American writer Langston Hughes. DeCarava's photos and Hughes's story, told through the character Sister Mary Bradley, depict and describe Black family life in Harlem, New York City, in the 1950s.
Mary Sampson Patterson Leary Langston (1835-1915) was an American abolitionist, the first Black woman to attend Oberlin College, and wife of notable abolitionists Lewis Sheridan Leary and Charles Henry Langston. She was also the grandmother of Langston Hughes and raised him for part of his childhood, inspiring his future work.
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