June 2020: Zora Neale Hurston

In June, we'll be reading works by Zora Neale Hurston. Have you previously read any of her books? Is so, which ones?

Either way, what do you plan on reading in June?

Somehow it's June already. Time really seems to fly by quickly, no matter what.

What is everyone reading this month?

FWIW, Zora Neale Hurston has one book on the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list. It's Their Eyes Were Watching God. I read it my senior year of high school and loved it.

Not sure what I plan on reading this month though... I am so behind in my reading and despite having more time being furloughed due to the pandemic, I find it difficult to concentrate so it's taking me easily twice as long to read as usual.

I wasn't going to join, as I have already read Their Eyes Were Watching God, but I just found her autobiography on Amazon for 99 cents so I think I'll give that a go. I can only imagine the life she has had.

I'm really struggling with reading these days. I want the escape, but I am finding that it takes eons to find the 'right' book. My tastes seem to change daily, so even when I find something interesting, I better read it in one sitting because I'll want something completely different tomorrow. Strange times!

>4 Yells: I hear that! Lately I seem to vacillate between taking all day to read a couple of pages, or sitting down and devouring half a book in one siting.

Please do share any interesting tidbits you discover about Zora Neale Hurston's life. I confess that if I learned any biographical information back in high school when reading Their Eyes Were Watching God, I have long since forgotten it.

My library didn't have much for Zora Neale Hurston digitally but there is an audiobook version of Barracoon, so I placed a hold on that.

If can you get the audiobook of Their Eyes Were Watching God it is marvelously performed by the incomparable Ruby Dee.

So I did end up listening to Barracoon and thought it was an excellent read. The audiobook is only about 4 hours long in total, and about 45 minutes to an hour at the top was an academic introduction. There were a couple of informative tidbits from that section, but it meandered for a while about origins of this work ... apparently there was a bit of controversy about Hurston not properly quoting some source material at first. (More details on that here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/zora-neale-hurston-barracoon-last-su...

This book originated from an article that Zora Neale Hurston wrote as an anthropologist; it is NOT a novel like her more famous Their Eyes Were Watching God. Despite Hurston interviewing the main subject in the late 1920s to early 1930s, this book was not published until 2018. One reason it was not published during Hurston's lifetime is that it is written in vernacular language; I could see this maybe being a bit of a hurdle reading in print but the audiobook narrator was so excellent that it wasn't a problem. (Robin Miles, the narrator, was wonderful all around. I felt like I was sitting down having a conversation with Cudjoe for the main part of the book; during the introduction, I felt like I was sitting in a college classroom listening to a good lecturer.)

Barracoon is about a man named Cudjoe Lewis (nee Oluale Kossola), who at the time was the last known survivor of the Clotilda. This was a ship that was involved in bringing slaves from Africa to America at a time when slavery was still legal within the U.S. but transporting slaves from other countries was made illegal. As a side note, right after reading this, I saw illustrator Kadir Nelson posted on his social media account his original artwork "Flight of the Clotilda," which was used as a recent National Geographic cover: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2020/02/clotilda-americas-last-slave... (Another link to view the painting here in case, like me, you are not a NatGeo subscriber: https://www.facebook.com/theartofkadirnelson/posts/americas-last-slave-ship-flig...; in addition, here's another article discussing how the remains of the Clotilda were just found in May 2019: https://mynbc15.com/news/local/clotilda-last-known-slave-ship-to-the-us-discover...

After being brought to America as a slave, Cudjoe lives through the Civil War and is freed. But his life is not all uphill there by a long shot. He and his family go through many sufferings, including the early deaths of his children. Some of his stories sadly still resonant today, as described in one review/article: "His youngest son, also called Cudjo, was shot dead by a police officer. The officer himself was black, but the story might sound wearyingly familiar to the modern Black Lives Matter movement: 'He make out he skeered my boy goin’ shoot him and shootee my boy … My po’ Affican boy dat doan never see Afficky soil.'" https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/barracoon-cudjo-lewis-zora-nea...

My library has started doing curbside pickup, which means I was able to get a copy of Hurston's biography, Dust Tracks.

I've only read the introduction so far (written by a historian, Robert Hemenway) but it is so fascinating that I wanted to come here and share. Hemenway says that the autobiography purposely excludes many parts of her life, including one of her marriages, much of her involvement in the Harlem Renaissance, even some of her writing for which she is famous. Hemenway says that Hurston "refuses" to provide dimension and motives about her life, instead choosing "camouflage."

Wow! What a statement! While I'll be reading this, I have to say, I kinda wish that it were a tutored read where a history or literature professor could be telling me what is REALLY going on behind the scenes.

Even without a tutored read, I can wholeheartedly recommend Dust Tracks on a Road. Hurston is a phenomenal writer. I love the way she uses local and contemporaneous dialect seamlessly in her higher brow and lower brow stories within the autobiography.

Having read the introduction, I did feel like I could spot a few places where she was keeping distance from the reader. I also wished to learn more about the Harlem Renaissance than she includes (which I may try to do later). But I liked this regardless. Of particular note, in my opinion, are the chapters where she talks about her writing process (fascinating) and the story of her mother's death (wrenching).

*Edit to fix touchstone

>10 sparemethecensor: I'm about halfway through and totally agree. She has lived a fascinating life and her love of the written word comes through loud and clear in her autobiography.

>9 sparemethecensor:, >10 sparemethecensor:, >11 Yells: So interesting. Obviously any memoir/autobiography is going to have some amount of self-censoring ... or at least deciding what is important/relevant enough to include. I could definitely see why Hurston would want to gloss over something personal like a marriage, but interesting that she also didn't include some of her writings or involvement with the Harlem Renaissance. Sounds like a great read though.

edited for technical difficulties, not content

In June I did read Their Eyes Were Watching God, or rather I listened to it on audio. I think that was a mistake. The black dialect was so "good" that I could not understand it in many places. I rewound and listened sometimes 2-3 times, but then just went on. I think actually reading this one would have been better, although I did think the book was better than average.

>13 Tess_W: Some books definitely don't lend themselves to being good audiobooks unfortunately. I'm glad you still were able to enjoy the book overall.

Just a small thing -- the dialect is 20th century African-American Southern (Florida in particular). Dialects by definition are quite specific, and black people aren't a monolith. I know you probably wrote quickly like we all do when we get a spare moment to chat about books, but I couldn't just let that one sit there without commenting.

>13 Tess_W: Sorry you didn't enjoy the audio. I've read the text and it is written in that very specific dialect ... almost everyone in my F2F book club complained about how hard it was to read it because of that (spelling / syntax / grammar not conforming to "the King's English") So when I listened to the audio I felt it was so much easier to understand than trying to force my brain to "translate" from the written dialect to the English I'm used to reading.

BTW .. the U.S. Postal Service has a commemorative stamp collection for the Harlem Renaissance writers. Hurston is one of those featured.

>14 sweetiegherkin: So you are the dialect police or authority? Sorry, I just couldn't let it go without commenting. I have an African-American brother-in-law. When I asked him if he preferred to be known as African-American or black, his reply was "black. because there has been nobody in my family from Africa since the 18th century." Hence, "black dialect." In fact, the American Linguistic Society says that Black English is a dialect! (Who knew?) Out of consideration to others, I would just never correct other adults in a forum such as this (but then that's me) for two reasons: 1) you could be wrong ;) and 2) it's insulting. But as you said, just a small thing, right? Good luck with the group.

>17 Tess_W: Sorry to have made a misstep and to appear to have been insulting you (that was very much not my intention!). I am not "the dialect police" nor an expert, so it's quite possible for me to be wrong. I was trying to make a point that it was a specific region that Hurston was portraying in the book, not something that necessarily represents an entire group containing millions of people. (In fact, my fear was that others might find that idea insulting, but perhaps I was anticipating a "problem" that wasn't really there.)

I do hope you will continue joining in our discussions and I will try not to put my foot in my mouth so much! Again, it is never my intention to insult anyone and I'm sorry that my words came across that way.

>17 Tess_W: That feels like a really outsized reaction to her post. Your post is much more aggressive and quitting the group over it, wow, that's not at all the point here. It behooves all of us not to consider racial groups to be monolithic which is the point of >14 sweetiegherkin: -- not an attack on you.

Check out this biography to accompany the unveiling of a Hurston memorial: https://www.tcpalm.com/story/news/local/st-lucie-county/2020/08/14/women-of-the-...

>19 sparemethecensor: I am sincerely sorry that Tess did seem to view it as a personal attack, which was very much never my intention. However, I am glad to see that at least one person saw the spirit of what I was trying to say -- that I'd like this group should be as inclusive as possible and for us all to learn more through reading diverse works and dialoguing with one another.

>20 sparemethecensor: Thanks for sharing. That was quite an informative article. This part really made me go 'wow':

"Because Hurston had no children or relatives nearby, the nursing home ordered all of her possessions be destroyed, including a number of manuscripts, letters and photos. They were thrown into a burn barrel and set on fire.

Deputy Patrick DuVal, the first Black sheriff’s deputy in St. Lucie County, doused the fire to save Hurston's work. Many of the items were charred, but they were saved, dried out and later donated to the University of Florida to be restored."

So thankful he was around to save those important archival documents. It would be a real shame for history to lose them all.

>22 sweetiegherkin: Yes, what a terrible turn of events for her personal papers! I'm so glad he was able to salvage some. It's a tragedy that no one at the nursing home thought her work was worth preserving.

>23 sparemethecensor: It's a tragedy that no one at the nursing home thought her work was worth preserving.

Yes, definitely, although I guess in some way it makes sense because her popularity (for lack of a better term) was so low then. Which is in itself a tragedy.

FYI: There's currently a book available through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers called Miami Noir, which apparently features a selection of works from various authors, including Zora Neale Hurston.