“[a]in’t even got a stall.” With the “dollar an’ a
half” from the pawn shop, advises the world-wise
speaker, “Go to de bootleg’s / Git some gin to make
you laugh.” Historians suggest that had his pub-
lishers insisted, Hughes would have changed the
name of the collection. Others note that the pub-
lishing house did resist Hughes’s choice of title but
that they desisted after Carl Van Vechten, whose
novel NIGGERHEAVENfocuses on the grim reali-
ties of working- and lower-class African Ameri-
cans, lobbied them to leave the original phrase
intact. Hughes himself addressed the history of the
book and its title in his 1940 autobiography THE
BIGSEA.There, he recalled that he “called it Fine
Clothes to the Jew,because the first poem, ‘Hard
Luck,’ a blues, was about a man who was often so
broke he had no recourse but to pawn his clothes—
to take them, as the Negroes say, to ‘the Jew’s’ or
‘Uncle’s.’ Since the whole book was largely about
people like that, workers, roustabouts, and
singers... people up today and down tomorrow,
working this week and fired the next, beaten and
baffled, but determined not to be wholly beaten,
buying furniture on the installment plan, filling the
house with roomers to help pay the rent, hoping to
get a new suit for Easter—and pawning that suit
before the Fourth of July—that was why I called my
book Fine Clothes to the Jew.” (Hughes, 202).
Hughes was quick to realize, however, that “it was a
bad title” because not only was “it confusing” but
“many Jewish people did not like it.” “I don’t know
why the Knopfs let me use it,” he wrote, “since they
were very helpful in their advice about sorting out
the bad poems from the good, but they said nothing
about the title. I might just as well have called the
book Brass Spitoons,which is one of the poems [in
the collection] I like best” (Hughes, 202).
The collection included poems inspired by
Hughes’s own experiences. In “Homesick Blues,” a
poem printed first in the June 1926 issue of Mea-
sureand then reprinted in Fine Clothes,the poet
recalled his childhood habit of wandering down to
the Lawrence, Kansas, railroad station and imagin-
ing the adventures that he might have. This par-
ticular poem was informed both by Hughes’s
longing to travel and his appreciation of the Negro
migrations of the age: “I went down to de station. /
Ma heart was in ma mouth. / Went down to de sta-
tion. / Heart was in ma mouth. / Lookin’ for a box
car / To roll me to de South.” Hughes also ad-
dressed unspeakable issues relating to sexuality,
promiscuity, and domestic violence. Poems such as
“Red Silk Stockings,” one that encouraged a young
woman to don her stockings and “let de white boys
/ Looks at yo legs” revealed the dire nature of black
poverty. The female subject of the poem was, ac-
cording to the narrator, forced toward this kind of
work. “Ain’t nothin to do for you nohow, / round
this town,—You’s too pretty” declared the narrator,
lodging a direct critique of black economic oppres-
sion and the toll it took on African-American
women in particular.
JULIAPETERKIN, one of the contemporary re-
viewers, praised Hughes for focusing on the “joys
and woes of dish-washers and bell-hops, crap-
shooters and cabaret girls, broken women and
wandering men, and without losing their strong
racial flavor... mold[ing] them into swift patterns
of musical verse.” Others, such as historian and
Pittsburgh Courier contributor JOEL AUGUSTUS
ROGERS, dismissed the book and its sickening
“trash.” The strength of Hughes’s portraits of the
underclass contributed to his growing reputation as
one of the most promising poets of the age. How-
ever, his use of dialect and the blues in the volume
elicited strong criticism in the African-American
press. The CHICAGOWHIPdeclared that the vol-
ume confirmed Hughes’s identity as “The poet
lowrate of Harlem” rather than its poet laureate
(Hughes, 203). The AMSTERDAMNEWSwent even
further, using a headline to declare “Langston
Hughes—The Sewer Dweller” (Hughes, 203).
Arnold Rampersad, Hughes’s biographer, suggests,
however, that the volume was an innovative pro-
ject and that the volume’s focus on the black
masses represented a pioneering gesture in Ameri-
can poetics. Yet, the emphatic and overwhelming
negative immediate response to the work reveals
the intense desire of many to advance images of
African-American propriety, gentility, and stability.
This reality was confirmed by Eustace Gay’s 5
February 1927 review of the work in the Philadel-
phia Tribune.It is “bad enough to have white au-
thors holding up our imperfections to public gaze,”
he wrote. “Our aim ought to be to present to the
general public, already mis-informed both by well-
meaning and malicious writers, our higher aims
and aspirations, and our better selves” (Hughes,Fine Clothes to the Jew 159