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About
The Author Excerpt:
Zora Neale Hurston
During
that richly expressive artistic period in the 1920s known as the
Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston was the leading black female
writer in the country. The first black graduate of Barnard, she
collaborated with Langston Hughes on Mule Bone, wrote stories for
major magazines, and produced four novels, many essays, an autobiography,
and two volumes on black mythology and folklore. She also studied
anthropology at Columbia.
Yet
by the late 1950s, she was working as a hotel maid in her native
Florida. She died in 1960 at a county welfare home and was buried
in an unmarked grave, completely forgotten-until Alice Walker, author
of The Color Purple and other novels, discovered her, arranged to
have a gravestone placed at the site, and almost singlehandedly
revived interest in this most remarkable lady with a 1975 article
for Ms. magazine called "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston."
In
Their Eyes Were Watching God, her best-known book, Hurston tells
the story of Janie Crawford, a black woman living in a black town
in Florida who has been married to three men and tried for the murder
of one of them. The town talks. Indeed, everyone talks. And they
do so in the Deep South black language of the 1930s. Some, notably
Richard Wright, were furious at Hurston for reinforcing the stereotype
whites liked to hold regarding blacks at the time. And, in truth,
it is difficult not to wince today when encountering dialogue like
"Dat's just de same as me 'cause mah tongue is in mah friend's
mouf."
But
Hurston wasn't writing about black people and their confrontations
with the white world. She was writing about a human community and
capturing the way its members talked. Had she been writing about
Eskimos or Italians in America, she would have used the same approach.
Remember, Hurston had done advanced work in anthropology at Columbia.
Surely getting it right, as opposed to getting it politically correct,
would always have been her goal.
In
retrospect, the country probably had to experience the civil rights
movement and the turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s before Zora Neale
Hurston could come into her own. Today, writers, scholars, and readers
of every race can appreciate what Hurston captured and passed on
to us all. Forget about labels. Zora Neale Hurston was an extraordinary
human being with exceptional gifts of observation and communication.
And she is a treat to read.
Good
to Know
-
Eatonville, Florida, Hurston's hometown, is the setting for many
of her stories. Located a few miles northeast of Orlando, Eatonville
was America's first incorporated all-black town. Her father once
served as Eatonville's mayor.
- In
1927, Charlotte Mason, a wealthy white New Yorker, provided Hurston
with a car, a movie camera, and $200 a month to travel the Deep
South collecting black folklore, stories, and songs. As a black
women traveling alone, Hurston's cover story was that she was
simply killing time until her bootlegger husband got out of jail.
Her 300-page account was only recently discovered in the Smithsonian
and has yet to be published in full.
-
A Guggenheim Fellowship in 1936 funded Hurston's study of the
West Indian practice of Obeah, a belief system characterized by
the use of sorcery and magic ritual. During that time, in a seven-week
period, she also wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God, her second
novel.
Treatises
and Treats
Zora
Neale Hurston Festival
Hurston fans celebrate the author's life and work each January in
Eatonville, Florida, with a program of literary events, music, dance,
drama, juried art exhibit, folk arts, and ethnic cuisine. For more
information, contact:
Zora Neale Hurston Festival
227 East Kennedy Blvd.
Eatonville, FL 32751
407-647-3307
www.zoranealehurston.cc/
Zora's
Works on Audio Tape
Listen
to Ruby Dee read an abridged two-cassette version of Their Eyes
Were Watching God from HarperAudio's Caedmon imprint, available
from Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com for about $15. Or revel in
the full-length, five-cassette version narrated by Michele-Denise
Woods, rented from Recorded Books for $14 (www.recordedbooks.com).
Either way, hearing the patois spoken by Hurston's characters reproduced
by such talented actresses is an even richer experience than reading
the dialogue on the page.
Companions
Zora
Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography
by Robert E. Hemenway (University of Illinois Press, 1977). The
definitive biography, with extensive notes and bibliography.
Zora Neale Hurston: Critical Perspectives Past and Present,
edited by Henry Louis Gates and K. A. Appiah (Amistad Press, 1993).
Essays, reviews, chronology, bibliography.
Zora Neale Hurston: An Annotated Bibliography and Reference
Guide by Rose Parkman Davis (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997).
A guide to books, articles, manuscripts, and Internet resources
about Hurston and her work. Also catalogs where her manuscripts,
letters, and memorabilia can be found.
Best of the Net
Zora Home Page
i.am/zora
An especially good fan page, with a nicely organized collection
of stories, photographs, and essays, and links to other "Zora
Resources" on the Net. You can also post messages to the site's
Zora Bulletin Board and search an archive of previous postings.
Folk's Tales
Novels
Jonah's Gourd Vine, 1934
Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937
Moses, Man of the Mountain, 1939
Seraph on the Suwanee, 1948
Autobiography
Dust Tracks on a Road, 1942
Collected
Works
A two-volume
set of Hurston's major work has been published by the Library of
America:
Novels and Stories, 1995
Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings, 1995
If You Like
Zora
Neale Hurston…
Try The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, The Color Purple
by Alice Walker, Dessa Rose by Sherley Anne Williams,
and The Wedding by Dorothy West.
Other
Excerpts
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