Explore "Ruby Brown" by Langston Hughes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
She was young and beautiful / And golden like the sunshine / That warmed her body.
And because she was colored / Mayville had no place to offer her, / Nor fuel for the clean flame of joy / That tried to burn within her soul.
One day, / Sitting on old Mrs. Latham's back porch / Polishing the silver, / She asked herself two questions / And they ran something like this:
What can a colored girl do / On the money from a white woman's kitchen?
And ain't there any joy in this town?
Now the streets down by the river / Know more about this pretty Ruby Brown, / And the sinister shuttered houses of the bottoms / Hold a yellow girl / Seeking an answer to her questions.
The good church folk do not mention / Her name any more.
But the white men, / Habitués of the high shuttered houses, / Pay more money to her now / Than they ever did before, / When she worked in their kitchens.