Product Description

A landmark gathering of short fiction, spanning the career of Zora Neale Hurston, author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, and "one of the greatest writers of our time."--Toni Morrison

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #170421 in Books
• Published on: 1996-02-14
• Released on: 1996-01-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Review
"One of the greatest writers of our time." -- -- Toni Morrison

About the Author
In her award-winning autobiography, Dust Trackson a Road (1942), Zora Neale Hurston claimed to have been born inEatonville, Florida, in 1901. She was, in fact, born in Notasulga, Alabama, onJanuary 7, 1891, the fifth child of John Hurston (farmer, carpenter, and Baptistpreacher) and Lucy Ann Potts (school teacher). The author of numerous books,including Their Eyes Were Watching God, Jonah's Gourd Vine, Mulesand Men, and Moses, Man of the Mountain, Hurston had achieved fameand sparked controversy as a novelist, anthropologist, outspoken essayist,lecturer, and theatrical producer during her sixty-nine years. Hurston's finestwork of fiction appeared at a time when artistic and politicalstatements--whether single sentences or book-length fictions--were peculiarlyconflated. Many works of fiction were informed by purely political motives;political pronouncements frequently appeared in polished literary prose. AndHurston's own political statements, relating to racial issues or addressingnational politics, did not ingratiate her with her black male contemporaries.The end result was that Their Eyes Were Watching God went out of printnot long after its first appearance and remained out of print for nearly thirtyyears. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has been one among many to ask: "How couldthe recipient of two Guggenheims and the author of four novels, a dozen shortstories, two musicals, two books on black mythology, dozens of essays, and aprizewinning autobiography virtually 'disappear' from her readership for threefull decades?"

That question remains unanswered. The fact remains thatevery one of Hurston's books went quickly out of print; and it was only throughthe determined efforts, in the 1970s, of Alice Walker, Robert Hemenway (Hurston'sbiographer), Toni Cade Bambara, and other writers and scholars that all of herbooks are now back in print and that she has taken her rightful place in thepantheon of American authors.

In 1973, Walker, distressed that Hurston's writings hadbeen all but forgotten, found Hurston's grave in the Garden of Heavenly Rest andinstalled a gravemarker. "After loving and teaching her work for a numberof years," Walker later reported, "I could not bear that she did nothave a known grave." The gravemarker now bears the words that Walker hadinscribed there:

ZORA NEALE HURSTON
GENIUS OF THE SOUTH
NOVELIST FOLKLORIST ANTHROPOLOGIST
(1891-1960)

In Brief
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist whose fictional and factual accounts of black heritage are unparalleled. She Is the author of many books, including Their Eyes Were Watching God, Dust Tracks on a Road, Tell My Horse, and Mules and Men.

Customer Reviews

An interesting read
The stories in this book cover just about everything from tales of alligator men to torrid love affairs. They provide a lot of insight into African American culture and history, and are even written in dialect. The forward included in this edition really helped me understand what I was reading when I started the book. Some of the stories are a little confusing though, because they are printed in two different versions in this book. There's a glossary of slang which is also really helpful. I'd reccomend it for anyone who's a fan of folklore or African American history or literature.

African American Folklore with the classic Hurston Flavor
These legends, folk tales, poems, and short stories, spendidly told, created and rewritten by Hurston, beautifully illustrate the pathos, passion and pleasure of the African American existence.

Black folklore from Ground Zero
Prior to Zora Neale Hurston, the rich well of black folklore was laargely written by white writers such as Joel Chandler Harris and Roark Bradford among others, with varying degrees of accuracy. Most literate and educated blacks were too ashamed of their folk cutlure to write about it until ZNH came on the scene.

This is a fine collection of some of her best short fiction. "John Redding Goes to Sea," written during her college days, accurately describes the life of an intelligent young black man feeling trapped by the illiteracy around him. "The EatonVille Anthology" is a rich collection of anecdotes about her hometown of Eatonville, Fla. "Drenched in Light" is about a free-spirited young black girl and her exasperated mother. "The Bone of Contention" is an old handed-down folklore that inspired her aborted play with Langston Hughes MULE BONE.

I could go on and on, but collections like this are of vital importance since Black folklore and stroytelling is in danger of being a dying art form. Read and keep the flame alive.