All of this sent me searching the shelves of used book stores (my favorite haunts) --looking for more Zora. That little 4 page declaration had made a strong impression, and I wanted to read more! It took me a while, however, to find her again. As I read that first-encountered story, I didn't know that it was purest Zora -- strong, outspoken, highly individualistic, and not afraid to stir up trouble. I later discovered that Zora placed herself in an unfavorable position with some of her brethren literati when she made statements like:
"...I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all."
"Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me."Zora was Zora, an individual first and foremost. I can see her so clearly as she saunters down a New York street; her elan is unstoppable in lines like:
"At certain times I have no race, I am me. When I set my hat at a certain angle and saunter down Seventh Avenue, Harlem City, feeling as snooty as the lions in front of Forty-Second Street Library, for instance. ...The cosmic Zora emerges. I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads."Not that Zora never feels a difference, but she is specific rather than general in her perception of those situations:"Sometimes I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me."
"I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.And in a wonderful energized rhapsody, Zora captures that moment of difference and elucidates it clearly when she describes entering The New World Caberet with a white friend:...For instance at Barnard. 'Beside the waters of the Hudson' I feel my race. Among the thousand white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon, and overswept, but through it all, I remain myself. When covered by the waters, I am; and the ebb but reveals me again."
"We enter chatting about any little nothing that we have in common and are seated by the jazz waiters. In the abrupt way that jazz orchestras have, this one plunges into a number. It loses no time in circumlocutions, but gets right down to business. It constricts the thorax and splits the heart with its tempo and narcotic harmonies. This orchestra grows rambunctious, rears on its hind legs and attacks the tonal veil with primitive fury, rending it, clawing it until it breaks through to the jungle beyond. I follow those heathen --follow them exultingly. I dance wildly inside myself; I yell within, I whoop; I shake my assegai [South African hunting spear] above my head, I hurl it true to the mark yeeeeooww! I am in the jungle and living in the jungle way. My face is painted red and yellow and my body is painted blue. My pulse is throbbing like a war drum. I want to slaughter something --give paid, give death to what, I do not know. But the piece ends. The men of the orchestra wipe their lips and rest their fingers. I creep back slowly to the veneer we call civilization with the last tone and find the white friend sitting motionless in his seat, smoking calmly.What a fabulous passage! I read that one paragraph, energized and flying in the primal ecstacy with Zora, and I was won. Personally, I cannot think of a better introduction to Zora, in all her dizzying individuality! My search on dusty shelves was launched, I was hungry for more Zora experiences!'Good music they have here,' he remarks, drumming the table with his fingertips.
Music. The great blobs of purple and red emotion have not touched him. He has only heard what I felt. He is far away and I see him but dimly across the ocean and the continent that have fallen between us. He is so pale with his whiteness then and I am so colored."
Somehow we didn't really make contact until this last summer (1997) when I finally had a chance to immerse myself in Their Eyes Were Watching God. I had first tried to read it in summer of '96, but --oddly, I had a hard time getting into the story initially. I decided to make sure I was in a patient and receptive state before trying again.
The resulting journey was like walking barefoot through a long vista of fruit trees in blossom (to extrapolate from one of the powerful visions in the book), through dew-clinging grass, with gusts of wind, sometimes wet with rain, sometimes filled with fluttering benedictions of wind-dancing blossom petals. It's a total aesthetic delight and a sensual song.
One of the more difficult aspects of the book, for me, was getting used to the dialect. I have often had this problem with dialects (I had even more trouble with the servant's speech in Wuthering Heights:-) I had to strongly focus myself to stay in tune with the characters and their speech patterns, but it was worth the effort. I also loved finding out that Zora was an anthropologist, a student of Franz Boas at Barnard even, and that she honored and lovingly portrayed her characters in the richness of their true culture.
Starrynights c1997
Kip's Zora page is here --lovely pages and lots of wonderful pictures of Zora! There are wonderful links, like one to a discussion of Their Eyes... (and links to the recording of it on RealPlayer). The collection of linked Essays is a treasure trove. There's also a very impressively detailed Chronology for Zora. I think, The Bulletin Board is Kip's idea too! Great Site.
Tim Gallaher's Zora Page. Nice page, although I am mystified by his statement about Alice Walker:
"I had read a book called The Color Purple by Alice Walker (you've probably heard of it). I was surprised to see how much Walker had, to put it nicely, borrowed from Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God."
It had been years since I had read The Color Purple, myself, but I didn't remember anything to justify this comment. Puzzled, I re-read both The Color Purple and Their Eyes Were Watching God --by the way, Thanks Tim! It was an even greater pleasure reading them this time around; both books just get better and better with each reading! However, I still could not find any justification for Tim's criticism of Walker. If speaking of domestic violence, unjust attitudes toward women, or a woman's personal journey in search of herself is stealing another woman's story ...well then, we women will just have to put down our pens permanently, I guess:-> Seriously, these are commonly encountered, endured or transcended circumstances, and the search for self is the universal human experience...so his point is...? I'll have to write him and ask.
Plowshare Theatre's Production based on Zora's life.
Rita Hook's Conjured Into Being: Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Felice Aull's brief notes about Zora, a brief commentary on racism in medical practice, as described in Zora's My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience, and a fairly complete synopsis of Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Or visit my HotSprings Page.
