Fine Clothes To The Jew - Poems of Black America in the 1920s

by Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes was an absolutely amazing person. He was born on February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. Even as a child, he lived all over the US and in Mexico, too. He lived in a number of large cities. He spent some time at Columbia University, but didn’t enjoy the experience.
He set out to see the world.

He sailed to the Canary Islands, to Africa, to Holland, to Italy, and more. He explored the world. And eventually he decided to take on New York City.

His poems showcase his wide range of experience. While his first book received great acclaim, this second book of poetry “Fine Clothes To the Jew” was not so fortunate when it was published by Hughes in 1927. It received criticism for not being supportive enough of the Black community and experience. Contemporary critics called it full of “the gutter and the sewer”. Langston, on the other hand, felt he was writing about the real life of his friends and family.

The title of this book, “Fine Clothes To The Jew”, was common slang in Harlem, New York at the time. In essence it meant, when you needed money, you brought your best clothes to a Jewish pawnbroker where you’d get the most possible for the trade.

Langston was a Black man writing about the Black experience in the 1920s. Many of the terms he uses as a matter of course, modern readers could find offensive.

Genres: Poetry, Classics

101 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1927

About the author

Through poetry, prose, and drama, American writer James Langston Hughes made important contributions to the Harlem renaissance; his best-known works include Weary Blues (1926) and The Ways of White Folks (1934).

People best know this social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist James Mercer Langston Hughes, one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry, for his famous written work about the period, when "Harlem was in vogue."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langsto...

Reviews

[Raymond · Rating 3 out of 5]

**You can read this collection for free courtesy of Yale University: https://collections.library.yale.edu/...**

I came across the title of this 1927 collection last month when I read Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography. In the book it was mentioned that Zora would read Hughes' book to the people she was collecting folklore from. It became "de party book" and was "quoted in Railroad camps, phosphate mines, turpentine stills, etc.". After reading that passage I had to see why did this book resonate so much with everyday Black people. After reading I can see why. The language/dialect that Hughes writes in is the language of the Black working class. The poems also had a blues feeling to them.

The title is interesting, especially because it is not a title of any of the poems, it comes from some lines in the poem "Hard Luck", "Gather up yo' fine clothes, An' sell 'em to de Jew". According to Joe Nazel, the phrase "Fine Clothes to the Jew" was popular in Harlem, and refers to when people would sell their clothes to Jewish-owned pawn shops when they were in need of money.

[laurel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sad, lonely, beautiful.

[Dianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Langston Hughes is a favorite - a snapshot boots on the ground in Harlem in the Renaissance of culture, style, speech and music. Tough going for those unaccustomed to the vernacular of the day, myself included, who came along a few decades later.

[Gijs Limonard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hughes' poetry is a recent discovery for me; I've been missing out. Favorite from this volume:


PRAYER

I ask you this:
Which way to go?
I ask you this:
Which sin to bear?
Which crown to put
Upon my hair?
I do not know,
Lord God,
I do not know,

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

i would like to see some of these poems, most of which are written in the style of classic blues, performed live

[annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

mundane and musical

[Renee Morales · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Dream-singers all, –– / My people. / Story-tellers all, –– / My people."