Zora Neale Hurston: Short Stories

Literary career

When Hurston arrived in New York City in 1925, the Harlem Renaissance was at its zenith, and she soon became one of the writers at its center. Shortly before she entered Barnard, Hurston's short story "Spunk" was selected for The New Negro, a landmark anthology of fiction, poetry, and essays focusing on African and African-American art and literature.[42] In 1926, a group of young black writers including Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Wallace Thurman, calling themselves the Niggerati, produced a literary magazine called Fire!! that featured many of the young artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance.

In 1927, Hurston traveled to the Deep South to collect African-American folk tales. She also interviewed Cudjoe Kazzola Lewis, of Africatown, Alabama, who was the last known survivor of the enslaved Africans carried aboard Clotilda, an illegal slave ship that had entered the US in 1860, and thus the last known person to have been transported in the Transatlantic slave trade. The next year she published the article "Cudjoe's Own Story of the Last African Slaver" (1928). According to her biographer Robert E. Hemenway, this piece largely plagiarized the work of Emma Langdon Roche,[43] an Alabama writer who wrote about Lewis in a 1914 book. Hurston did add new information about daily life in Lewis' home village of Bantè.[44]

Hurston intended to publish a collection of several hundred folk tales from her field studies in the South. She wanted to have them be as close to the original as possible but struggled to balance the expectations of her academic adviser, Franz Boas, and her patron, Charlotte Osgood Mason. This manuscript was not published at the time. A copy was later found at the Smithsonian archives among the papers of anthropologist William Duncan Strong, a friend of Boas. Hurston's Negro Folk-tales from the Gulf States was published posthumously in 2001 as Every Tongue Got to Confess.[45]

In 1928, Hurston returned to Alabama with additional resources; she conducted more interviews with Lewis, took photographs of him and others in the community, and recorded the only known film footage of him—an African who had been trafficked to the United States through the slave trade. Based on this material, she wrote a manuscript, Barracoon, completing it in 1931. Hemenway described it as "a highly dramatic, semifictionalized narrative intended for the popular reader."[46][47] It has also been described as a "testimonial text", more in the style of other anthropological studies since the late 20th century.

After this round of interviews, Hurston's literary patron, philanthropist Charlotte Osgood Mason, learned of Lewis and began to send him money for his support.[47] Lewis was also interviewed by journalists for local and national publications.[48] Hurston's manuscript Barracoon was eventually published posthumously on May 8, 2018.[49][50] "Barracoon", or barracks in Spanish, is where captured Africans were temporarily imprisoned before being shipped abroad.[50]

In 1929, Hurston moved to Eau Gallie, Florida, where she wrote Mules and Men. It was published in 1935.[51]

1930s

By the mid-1930s, Hurston had published several short stories and the critically acclaimed Mules and Men (1935), a groundbreaking work of "literary anthropology" documenting African-American folklore from timber camps in North Florida. In 1930, she collaborated with Langston Hughes on Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, a play that they never staged. Their collaboration caused their friendship to fall apart.[52] The play was first staged in 1991.[23]

Hurston adapted her anthropological work for the performing arts. Her folk revue The Great Day featured authentic African song and dance, and premiered at the John Golden Theatre in New York in January 1932.[53] Despite positive reviews, it had only one performance. The Broadway debut left Hurston in $600 worth of debt. No producers wanted to move forward with a full run of the show.

During the 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston produced two other musical revues, From Sun to Sun, which was a revised adaptation of The Great Day, and Singing Steel. Hurston had a strong belief that folklore should be dramatized.

Hurston's first three novels were published in the 1930s: Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934); Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), written during her fieldwork in Haiti and considered her masterwork; and Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939).

In 1937, Hurston was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to conduct ethnographic research in Jamaica and Haiti.[54] Tell My Horse (1938) documents her account of her fieldwork studying spiritual and cultural rituals in Jamaica and vodoun in Haiti.

1940s and 1950s

Neale Hurston in 1938, photographed by Carl Van Vechten

In the 1940s, Hurston's work was published in such periodicals as The American Mercury and The Saturday Evening Post. Her last published novel, Seraph on the Suwanee, notable principally for its focus on white characters, was published in 1948. It explores images of "white trash" women. Jackson (2000) argues that Hurston's meditation on abjection, waste, and the construction of class and gender identities among poor whites reflects the eugenics discourses of the 1920s.[55]

In 1952, Hurston was assigned by the Pittsburgh Courier to cover the small-town murder trial of Ruby McCollum, the prosperous black wife of the local bolita racketeer, who had killed a racist white doctor. She also contributed to Ruby McCollum: Woman in the Suwannee Jail (1956), a book by journalist and civil rights advocate William Bradford Huie.

Posthumous publications

Hurston's manuscript Every Tongue Got to Confess (2001), a collection of folktales gathered in the 1920s, was published posthumously after being discovered in Smithsonian archives.[45]

In 2008, The Library of America selected excerpts from Ruby McCollum: Woman in the Suwannee Jail (1956), to which Hurston had contributed, for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American true crime writing.

Hurston's nonfiction book Barracoon was published in 2018.[50] A barracoon is a type of barracks where slaves were imprisoned before being taken overseas.[50]

Spiritual views

In Chapter XV of Dust Tracks on a Road, entitled "Religion", Hurston expressed disbelief in and disdain for both theism and religious belief.[56] She states:

Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility. Life, as it is, does not frighten me, since I have made my peace with the universe as I find it, and bow to its laws.[57]

However, though clearly an atheist who firmly rejected the Baptist beliefs of her preacher father, she retained an interest in religion from anthropological and literary standpoints. She investigated voodoo, going so far as to participate in rituals alongside her research subjects. In another of her original uncensored notes for her autobiography shares her admiration for Biblical characters like King David: "He was a man after God's own heart, and was quite serviceable in helping God get rid of no-count rascals who were cluttering up the place."[58]

Public obscurity

Hurston's work slid into obscurity for decades, for both cultural and political reasons. The use of African-American dialect, as featured in Hurston's novels, became less popular. Younger writers felt that it was demeaning to use such dialect, given the racially charged history of dialect fiction in American literature. Also, Hurston had made stylistic choices in dialogue influenced by her academic studies. Thinking like a folklorist, Hurston strove to represent speech patterns of the period, which she had documented through ethnographic research.[59]

Several of Hurston's literary contemporaries criticized her use of dialect, saying that it was a caricature of African-American culture and was rooted in a post-Civil War, white racist tradition. These writers, associated with the Harlem Renaissance, criticized Hurston's later work as not advancing the movement. Richard Wright, in his review of Their Eyes Were Watching God, said:

The sensory sweep of her novel carries no theme, no message, no thought. In the main, her novel is not addressed to the Negro, but to a white audience whose chauvinistic tastes she knows how to satisfy. She exploits that phase of Negro life which is "quaint," the phase which evokes a piteous smile on the lips of the "superior" race.[60]

But since the late 20th century, there has been a revival of interest in Hurston.[33] Critics have since praised her skillful use of idiomatic speech.[61]

During the 1930s and 1940s, when her work was published, the pre-eminent African-American author was Richard Wright, a former Communist.[62] Unlike Hurston, Wright wrote in explicitly political terms. He had become disenchanted with Communism, but he used the struggle of African Americans for respect and economic advancement as both the setting and the motivation for his work. Other popular African-American authors of the time, such as Ralph Ellison, dealt with the same concerns as Wright albeit in ways more influenced by Modernism.

Hurston, who at times evinced conservative attitudes, was on the other side of the disputes over the promise of leftist politics for African-Americans.[63] In 1951, for example, Hurston argued that New Deal economic support had created a harmful dependency by African Americans on the government and that this dependency ceded too much power to politicians.[64]

Despite increasing difficulties, Hurston maintained her independence and a determined optimism. She wrote in a 1957 letter:

But ... I have made phenomenal growth as a creative artist. ... I am not materialistic ... If I do happen to die without money, somebody will bury me, though I do not wish it to be that way.[65]

Posthumous recognition

  • Zora Neale Hurston's hometown of Eatonville, Florida, celebrates her life annually in Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities.[66] It is home to the Zora Neale Hurston Museum of Fine Arts, and a library named for her opened in January 2004.
  • The Zora Neale Hurston House in Fort Pierce has been designated as a National Historic Landmark. The city celebrates Hurston annually through various events such as Hattitudes, birthday parties, and the several-day event at the end of April known as Zora! Festival.[11][67]
  • Author Alice Walker sought to identify Hurston's unmarked grave in 1973. She installed a grave marker inscribed with "A Genius of the South".[68][69][70]
  • Alice Walker published "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston" in the March 1975 issue of Ms. magazine, reviving interest in Hurston's work.[71][72]
  • In 1991, Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, a 1930 play by Langston Hughes and Hurston, was first staged; it was staged in New York City by the Lincoln Center Theater.
  • In 1994, Hurston was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.[73]
  • In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Zora Neale Hurston on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.[74]
  • Barnard College dedicated its 2003 Virginia C. Gildersleeve Conference to Hurston. 'Jumpin' at the Sun': Reassessing the Life and Work of Zora Neale Hurston focused on her work and influence.[75] Alice Walker's Gildersleeve lecture detailed her work on discovering and publicizing Hurston's legacy.[76]
  • The Zora Neale Hurston Award was established in 2008; it is awarded to an American Library Association member who has "demonstrated leadership in promoting African American literature".[77]
  • Hurston was inducted as a member of the inaugural class of the New York Writers Hall of Fame in 2010.
  • The novel Harlem Mosaics (2012) by Whit Frazier depicts the friendship between Langston Hughes and Hurston and tells the story of how their friendship fell apart during their collaboration on the 1930 play Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life.[52]
  • On January 7, 2014, the 123rd anniversary of Hurston's birthday was commemorated by a Google Doodle.[78][79]
  • She was one of twelve inaugural inductees to the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame on June 8, 2015.[80]
  • An excerpt from her autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road was recited in the documentary film August 28: A Day in the Life of a People, directed by Ava DuVernay, which debuted at the opening of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2016.[81][82][83]
  • Hurston was honored in a play written and performed by students at Indian River Charter High School in October 2017, January 2018, and January 2019. The play was based on letters written between Hurston and Vero Beach entrepreneur, architect and pioneer Waldo E. Sexton.[84][85]
  • She is the subject of the documentary film Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming A Space which first aired on American Experience on January 17, 2023.[86]
  • Zora's Daughters is a podcast hosted by Alyssa A.L. James and Brendane Tynes, who "follow in the legacy of Hurston and other Black women ethnographers".[87]

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