"One of the greatest writers of our time."
Book 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
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 HURSTONGENIUS OF THE SOUTHNOVELIST FOLKLORIST ANTHROPOLOGIST(1891-1960)In BriefZora 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.
Complete Stories FROM THE PUBLISHER
This landmark gathering of Zora Neale Hurston's short fiction - most of which appeared only in literary magazines during her lifetime and some of which has never been published - reveals the evolution of the talents of one of the most important African-American writers. Spanning the years from 1921, when Howard University's literary magazine published "John Redding Goes to Sea," to 1955, when Hurston was working on different versions of the story of the beheading of John the Baptist as told by Salome's mother, five years before her death, these stories attest to the author's tremendous range at the same time as they establish themes that recur in her longer fiction. In such stories as "Spunk," "The Gilded Six-Bits," and "The Conscience of the Court," Hurston's customary use of metaphor and black dialect enriches her simple narratives and brings her characters vividly to life. Folklore, the cornerstone of Hurston's fiction, is integral to such stories as "Cock Robin Beale Street," "Book of Harlem," and "'Possum or Pig?" Biblical themes, another trademark Hurston offering, appear in "The Seventh Veil" and "The Bone of Contention." These and the other stories in this collection map, in rich language and imagery, Hurston's development and concerns as a writer and provide an invaluable reflection of the mind and imagination of the author of the acclaimed novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Art & Photography
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