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Tvordi
Intro to Poetry
April 10, 2006
Context in Langston Hughes’ “Rent-Party Shout: For a Lady Dancer”
Langston Hughes’ “Rent-Party Shout: For a Lady Dancer” is about the way people
struggle to hold on to things that haven’t done them much good. The rent party that provides the
poem’s setting is an effort to keep renting a tiny apartment. The poem features a woman at one
of these gatherings trying to locate her significant other, who has a tendency to be discovered
“layin’ round” (18) with other women. She clings to him like the renters struggle to maintain
their apartments. Understanding what rent parties were can help readers see the connections
Hughes suggests between the desperation of such a last-ditch celebration and the speaker of the
poem’s efforts to track down her roving mate. This sense of desperation, both economic and
personal in nature, is the poem’s theme.
Living conditions in Harlem during the 1920s and 1930s were hardly the finest to be
found. It was located in “a small section of Manhattan about fifty blocks long and seven or eight
blocks wide; an area teeming with life and activity. Housing experts have estimated that,
sometimes, as many as five to seven thousand people [had] been known to live in a single block”
(Boyd 1). Rooms were in such demand that a single bedroom was frequently separated into two
or three smaller ones with beaverboard partitions (Boyd 1). A modest three-bedroom apartment
could house more than nine people. Hughes described places he attended rent parties in as “small
apartments where God knows who lived” (“Hughes on Harlem Rent Parties” 416). Harlem was
“a typical slum and tenement area little different from many others in New York except for the
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fact that in Harlem rents were higher” (Boyd 1). This was due to a large influx of AfricanAmerican renters – some estimates say more than 200,000 in the early 1920s– that had found
work in the big city (Boyd 1). They were forced to pay doubled or tripled rent rates because of
discrimination (Boyd 2). The situation was even more dire for those living in sublet apartments.
The prospect of paying rent was extremely daunting.
Still, the apartment dwellers fought hard to keep what they had, hence the vogue for rent
parties that swept through Harlem. The Harlemites were willing to invite plenty of strangers to
congregate in their homes until dawn (“Hughes on Harlem Rent Parties” 417), or even until
seven or eight o’clock the next morning for a cover charge (Boyd 2). Since their chances of
being able to pay the rent and stay in a familiar place improved, parties continued to rage. In
much the same way as the Harlemites went to extremes to keep their apartments, the poem’s
speaker is desperately trying to keep her man even though he seems to be a cheating fool. The
inhabitants of Harlem had nowhere but terrible and overpriced apartments to call their own, in
the same way that the speaker’s man is all she has. She isn’t about to let him go without a fight.
Familiarity carries with it a feeling of safety, and in the unpredictable worlds of Harlem and love,
anything remotely like safety is clutched as tightly as a lifeline.
The speaker of the poem is in pain because of her precarious situation, and the rent party
she attends serves as a distraction from that pain. Hughes generates the atmosphere of a rent
party with references to music and dance that break up, or at least mask, the pain of the poem’s
speaker. “Whip it to a jelly!” (1) “Shake that thing! O! / Shake it slow!” (5-6). “Yo’ music’s
fine!” (20). The speaker uses the dancing to forget her troubles. Distractions were a hot
commodity in the tough world of Harlem, and hosts of rent parties competed with local public
functions for attendance like the speaker competes with other women for attention from her man.
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She is worried about holding on to him, perhaps even enraged that he tends to roam, and the
party gives her something else to think about. The entertainment offered by rent parties was a
powerful distraction, and the residents of Harlem counted on people’s need for escapism to keep
those parties crowded. Happy, diverted people made for bigger donations. It also helped if they
had been drinking. These parties were frequently thrown in Harlem during the 1920s and 1930s
(“Hughes on Harlem Rent Parties” 416), while Prohibition was still in effect. Alcohol was often
sold at rent parties (Boyd 3). It bolstered attendance and profits as well as the moods of partygoers. Illegal alcohol was such an important element of rent parties that when Prohibition was
repealed in 1933, rent parties declined (Boyd 3). While availability of alcohol remained a
definite draw, there was also dancing, music, and good company. Competition with public
entertainment could be fierce, but in a few ways hosts of rent parties had the upper hand, as these
quotes illustrate: “It cost each individual very little, probably much less than he would have spent
in some public amusement place” (Boyd 2). “The Saturday night rent parties that I attended were
often more amusing than any night club (Hughes on Harlem Rent Parties, 416).” Financial
desperation was nothing to celebrate, but in the direst times a common solution was to throw a
party with drinks and dancing. Celebration could save the residents of Harlem, at least
temporarily.
One of the ways they advertised rent parties was through the distribution of small,
brightly colored cards (“Hughes on Harlem Rent Parties” 417). The cards were frequently
memorable and energetic in their descriptions, employing catchy phrases like the example
offered by Hughes: “We got yellow girls, we’ve got black and tan / Will you have a good time? –
YEAH MAN! (“Hughes on Harlem Rent Parties” 417). The simplicity of these cards brings to
mind the overly romanticized information offered in personal ads and the verses printed in
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greeting cards. Drawing people to rent parties operated on the same principles as attracting a
mate to oneself. Naturally, the hosts did not want to attract the wrong type of crowd. Some were
careless about where they placed the cards, “stuck in the grille of apartment house elevators”
(“Hughes on Harlem Rent Parties” 417). Others were more cautious: “They were careful,
however, to give these cards to only the ‘right’ people... the police were more diligent about
raiding questionable apartments than they were about known ‘gin mills’ that flourished on
almost every corner” (Boyd 3). With parties as well as with love, it was important to be careful
about who was invited.
The unique informal diction in this poem serves as a conduit to express the feelings of
desperation that are its theme. The language is grounding and helps create the atmosphere of
Harlem in the 1920s while encompassing the pain that was common to the time and place. Lines
such as “Mamie’s got ma man –“ (3), and,
For I’ll shoot him in de shoulder,
Else I’ll cut him down,
Cause I knows I can find him
When he’s in de ground – (13-16)
create a sense of the speaker as an angry, hurt individual. If the lines were reworded into middle
or formal diction, they would lose almost all of their power. The dialect connects the speaker in
Hughes’ poem to the time and place that has done so much to define her.
The title “Rent-Party Shout: For a Lady Dancer” has multiple meanings. They relate to
actual rent parties and the psychological state of the residents of Harlem. The speaker shouts her
lines through the crush of party-goers. The music, talking, and laughter that make up the
festivities literally drown out her voice. In a world of so much poverty and pain, it’s also hard for
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one anguished voice to be distinguished from the others. The suffering in Harlem was
communal, but individual troubles were eclipsed by the pain of the masses. More shouts in the
poem are encouragements called to the dancers. All of them have troubles, but they try to help
each other through them and find ways to keep their spirits up. Rent parties attracted a widely
varied crowd, from elevator operators to “ladies’ maids and truck drivers, laundry workers and
shoe shine boys, seamstresses and porters (“Hughes on Harlem Rent Parties” 417). Each of these
workers had unique problems, but they were united through the commonality of strife. The
parties drew a large group of people together for a few precious hours in which they could share
joy and hope in the midst of difficult lives. The final lines of the poem, “I’m gonna kill that /
Man o’ mine!” (21-22) make up what is perhaps the most compelling shout of all. The speaker
still wants to find her man, if only so she can express rage and the unfairness with which she has
been treated. She wants the others to know what she is going through. Sharing her grief with
others gives her the opportunity for it to be validated. The speaker is the lady dancer referred to
in the title. Like any guest at a rent party, she is one of many, but the situation she’s in makes her
worthy of Hughes’ notice in the same way that brilliant dancing could draw the crowd’s attention
and encouragement.
Rent parties were a way for the residents of Harlem to cheer up when times were hard,
distract themselves from the perils of their lives, offer one another solace and strength, and
hopefully earn enough money to cover rent. The party in “Rent-Party Shout: For a Lady Dancer”
gives the speaker some relief, or at least a temporary distraction, from her pain. She encourages
those around her and attempts to get her man back. When bad apartments were all they had, the
Harlemites were determined to keep them. In the same way, the poem’s speaker tries to keep the
allegiance of a man who cheats on her. The poem’s diction and use of dialect enhance the sense
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of place and life status already suggested by the poem’s setting. “Rent-Party Shout: For a Lady
Dancer” is filled with many different kinds of shouting: shouts struggling to be heard, shouts to
help others lift their spirits, and ultimately, a shout of rage at the injustice of life. The poem’s
speaker is the lady dancer. She’s just another face in the crowd, but she’s deserving of attention
because of her humanizing struggles and pain.
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Works Cited
Boyd, Frank. “Harlem Rent Parties.” American Life Histories, 1936-1940.
<http://memory.loc.gov/ learn/features/timeline/progress/prohib/rent.html>
Hughes, Langston. “Rent-Party Shout: For a Lady Dancer.” Poetry: An Introduction. 4th Edition.
Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. 404-405.
Hughes, Langston. “Hughes on Harlem Rent Parties.” Poetry: An Introduction. 4th Edition.
Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. 416-417