Barracoon
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In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation's history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo's firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States. In 1931, Hurston returned to Plateau, the African-centric community three miles from Mobile founded by Cudjo and other former slaves from his ship. Spending more than three months there, she talked in depth with Cudjo about the details of his life. During those weeks, the young writer and the elderly formerly enslaved man ate peaches and watermelon that grew in the backyard and talked about Cudjo's past--memories from his childhood in Africa, the horrors of being captured and held in a barracoon for selection by American slavers, the harrowing experience of the Middle Passage packed with more than 100 other souls aboard the Clotilda, and the years he spent in slavery until the end of the Civil War.
The Complete Stories
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A new collection of short stories spanning the career of one of the most important African American women writers of the century. Hurston is the bestselling author of Their Eyes Were Watching God which sold more than 415,000 copies. Most of these collected stories have previously appeared only in magazines.
Dust Tracks on a Road
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Dust Tracks on a Road is the bold, poignant, and funny autobiography of novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, one of American literature's most compelling and influential authors. Hurston's powerful novels of the South--including Jonah's Gourd Vine and, most famously, Their Eyes Were Watching God--continue to enthrall readers with their lyrical grace, sharp detail, and captivating emotionality. First published in 1942, Dust Tracks on a Road is Hurston's personal story, told in her own words. The Perennial Modern Classics Deluxe edition includes an all-new forward by Maya Angelou, an extended biography by Valerie Boyd, and a special P.S. section featuring the contemporary reviews that greeted the book's original publication.
Every Tongue Got to Confess
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Every Tongue Got to Confess is an extensive volume of African American folklore that Zora Neale Hurston collected on her travels through the Gulf States in the late 1920s. The bittersweet and often hilarious taleswhich range from longer narratives about God, the Devil, White Folk, and Mistaken Identity to witty one-linersreveal attitudes about faith, love, family, slavery, race, and community. Together, this collection of nearly 500 folktales weaves a vibrant tapestry that celebrates the African American life in the rural South and represent a major part of Zora Neale Hurstons literary legacy.
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick
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In 1925, Barnard student Zora Neale Hurston--the sole black student at the college--was living in New York, "desperately striving for a toe-hold on the world." During this period, she began writing short works that captured the zeitgeist of African American life and transformed her into one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Nearly a century later, this singular talent is recognized as one of the most influential and revered American artists of the modern period. Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick is an outstanding collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, racism and sexism that proudly reflect African American folk culture. Brought together for the first time in one volume, they include eight of Hurston's "lost" Harlem stories, which were found in forgotten periodicals and archives. These stories challenge conceptions of Hurston as an author of rural fiction and include gems that flash with her biting, satiric humor, as well as more serious tales reflective of the cultural currents of Hurston's world. All are timeless classics that enrich our understanding and appreciation of this exceptional writer's voice and her contributions to America's literary traditions.
How It Feels to Be Colored Me
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"How It Feels To Be Colored Me" by Florida native Zora Neale Hurston was originally published in The World Tomorrow in May 1928. In this autobiographical piece about her own color, Hurston reflects on her early childhood in an all-black Florida town and her first experiences in life feeling "different." In this beautiful piece, Hurston largely focuses on the similarities we all share and on her own self-identity in the face of difference. "Through it all, I remain myself."
Jonah's Gourd Vine
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A story of love and community, written by the hand of Zora Neale Hurston, one of the 20th century's greatest authors, and a woman who truly understands her characters' motivations. This modern classic edition of Jonah's Gourd Vine features an updated cover and a P.S. section which includes insights, interviews, and more. Jonah's Gourd Vine, Zora Neale Hurston's first novel, originally published in 1934, tells the story of John Buddy Pearson, "a living exultation" of a young man who loves too many women for his own good. Lucy, his long-suffering wife, is his true love, but there's also Mehaly and Big 'Oman and the scheming Hattie who conjures hoodoo spells to ensure his attentions. Even after becoming the popular pastor of Zion Hope where his sermons and prayers for cleansing rouse the congregation's fervor, he has to confess that though he is a preacher on Sundays, he is a "natchel man" the rest of the week. And so in this sympathetic portrait of a man and his community, shows that faith and tolerance and good intentions cannot resolve the tension between the spiritual and the physical. That Zora Neale Hurston makes this age-old dilemma come so alive is a tribute to her understanding of the vagaries of human nature.
Lies and Other Tall Tales
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These tales are so tall they touch the sky! From Caldecott Honor and Coretta Scott King Honor artist Christopher Myers and Zora Neale Hurston. While traveling in the Gulf States in the 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston, author of the classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, collected and recorded some real whoppers told by folks from all walks of life. Not "dog ate my homework" kind of lies, but tales so wild you didn't ever want to hear the truth. And now today's picture book readers can enjoy these far-fetched fibs with Christopher Myers's spirited adaption and bold, expressive collages.
The Life of Herod the Great
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In the 1950s, as a continuation of Moses, Man of the Mountain, Zora Neale Hurston penned a historical novel about one of the most infamous figures in the Bible, Herod the Great. In Hurston's retelling, Herod is not the wicked ruler of the New Testament who is charged with the "slaughter of the innocents," but a forerunner of Christ--a beloved king who enriched Jewish culture and brought prosperity and peace to Judea. From the peaks of triumph to the depths of human misery, the historical Herod "appears to have been singled out and especially endowed to attract the lightning of fate," Hurston writes. An intimate of both Marc Antony and Julius Caesar, the Judean king lived during the first century BCE, in a time of war and imperial expansion that was rife with political assassinations and bribery, as the old world gave way to the new. Portraying Herod within this vivid and dynamic world of antiquity, little known to modern readers, Hurston's unfinished manuscript brings this complex, compelling, and misunderstood leader fully into focus. Hurston shared her findings about Herod's rise, his reign, and his waning days in letters to friends and associates.
Mules and Men
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Mules and Men is the first great collection of black America's folk world. In the 1930's, Zora Neale Hurston returned to her "native village" of Eatonville, Florida to record the oral histories, sermons and songs, dating back to the time of slavery, which she remembered hearing as a child. In her quest, she found herself and her history throughout these highly metaphorical folk-tales, "big old lies," and the lyrical language of song. With this collection, Zora Neale Hurston has come to reveal and preserve a beautiful and important part of American culture.
Seraph on the Suwanee
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This novel of turn-of-the-century white "Florida Crackers" marks a daring departure for Zora Neale Hurston, the author famous for her complex accounts of Black culture and heritage. Full of insights into the nature of love, attraction, faith, and loyalty, Seraph on the Suwanee is the compelling story of two people at once deeply in love and deeply at odds. With the same passion and understanding that have made Their Eyes Were Watching God a classic, Zora Neale Hurston explores the evolution of a marriage full of love but very little communication and the desires of a young woman in search of herself and her place in the world.
Sweat
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Now frequently anthologized, Zora Neale Hurston's short story "Sweat" was first published in Firell, a legendary literary magazine of the Harlem Renaissance, whose sole issue appeared in November 1926. Among contributions by Gwendolyn Bennett, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Wallace Thurman, "Sweat" stood out both for its artistic accomplishment and its exploration of rural Southern black life. In "Sweat" Hurston claimed the voice that animates her mature fiction, notably the 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God; the themes of marital conflict and the development of spiritual consciousness were introduced as well. "Sweat" exemplifies Hurston's lifelong concern with women's relation to language and the literary possibilities of black vernacular. This casebook for the story includes an introduction by the editor, a chronology of the author's life, the authoritative text of "Sweat," and a second story, "The Gilded Six-Bits." Published in 1932, this second story was written after Hurston had spent years conducting fieldwork in the Southern United States. The volume also includes Hurston's groundbreaking 1934 essay, "Characteristics of Negro Expression," and excerpts from her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road. An article by folklorist Roger Abrahams provides additional cultural contexts for the story, as do selected blues and spirituals. Critical commentary comes from Alice Walker, who led the recovery of Hurston's work in the 1970s, Robert Hemenway, Henry Louis Gates, Gayl Jones, John Lowe, Kathryn Seidel, and Mary Helen Washington.
Tell My Horse
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As a first-hand account of the weird mysteries and horrors of voodoo, Tell My Horse is an invaluable resource and fascinating guide. Based on Zora Neale Hurston's personal experiences in Haiti and Jamaica, where she participated as an initiate rather than just an observer of voodoo practices during her visits in the 1930s, this travelogue into a dark world paints a vividly authentic picture of ceremonies and customs and superstitions of great cultural interest.
Their Eyes Were Watching God
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One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston. Out of print for almost thirty years--due largely to initial audiences' rejection of its strong black female protagonist--Hurston's classic has since its 1978 reissue become perhaps the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature.
You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays
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Spanning more than 35 years of work, the first comprehensive collection of essays, criticism, and articles by the legendary author of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston, showcasing the evolution of her distinctive style as an archivist and author. You Don't Know Us Negroes is the quintessential gathering of provocative essays from one of the world's most celebrated writers, Zora Neale Hurston. Spanning more than three decades and penned during the backdrop of the birth of the Harlem Renaissance, Montgomery bus boycott, desegregation of the military, and school integration, Hurston's writing articulates the beauty and authenticity of Black life as only she could.
Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters
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A landmark collection of more than five hundred letters written by a woman at the heart of the Harlem Renaissance--an author who remains one of the most intriguing people in American cultural history. Through letters to Harlem Renaissance friends Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, Dorothy West, and Carl Van Vechten, and to bestselling author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Fannie Hurst, among others, readers experience the exuberance and trials of Hurston's life. Her letters to her patron, Mrs. Charlotte "Godmother" Osgood Mason, are laced with equal amounts of cynicism and reverence, and offer a fascinating glimpse of the perilously thin line Hurston tread to maintain vital monetary support as she pursued her art and avant-garde lifestyle (which included crossing the country collecting folklore, and a job as story editor at Paramount Pictures in the 1940s). Meticulously edited and annotated, this landmark collection of letters will provide her fans, as well as those discovering Hurston for the first time, with a penetrating and profound portrait into the life, writings (four novels, a play, an autobiography, and countless essays), and impressive imagination of one of the most amazing characters to grace American letters.