Thank you, Ma’am by Langston hughes
I just need a pair of blue suede shoes.
She was a large woman with a large purse that had everything in it but hammer and nails. It had a long strap, and she carried it slung across her shoulder. It was about eleven o’clock at night, and she was walking alone, when a boy ran up behind her and tried to snatch her purse. The strap broke with the single tug the boy gave it from behind. But the boy’s weight and the weight of the purse combined caused him to lose his balance so, instead of taking off full blast as he had hoped, the boy fell on his back on the sidewalk, and his legs flew up.
Hughes, Langston. The Langston Hughes Reader : [the Selected Writings of Langston Hughes. New York, G. Braziller, 1958.
Why we loved it
We’ll say it again: We have impeccable taste—it’s our brand. Langston Hughes doesn’t just write characters; he resurrects whole lives with dialogue alone. You’ll swear you know these people—hear them laugh too loud when nervous, feel their voices crack on certain words. That’s Hughes’ magic: he never explains his characters. He makes them breathe off the page, cigarette smoke curling around every word.
And the prose? We can’t stay quiet about it. Hughes crafts jazz-like sentences—improvisational yet precise, their rhythm begging you to speak them aloud. Try reading silently. We dare you. By paragraph three, you’ll whisper every “yes’m” and “I reckon” to taste their weight.
Then the ending. Oh, that ending lands like a slow poison. You won’t notice its power until you’re staring at the ceiling at 2 AM, piecing together Hughes’ clues like a detective. Masterful barely scratches the surface.
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