Zora Neale Hurston Reading List

My Background

I read Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston several years ago because it was one of my good friend's favorite book. I loved the opening paragraphs and used it as a writing sample many times as a teacher. In fact here it is:

"Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly."

That opening struck me. I've reread it many times. Overall, I liked the book when I first read it, but didn't love it.

As a teacher, I also used Hurston's essay "How It Feels to be Colored Me." It's a fun and engaging read. Students liked it and it sparked great classroom discussions. Hurston's perspective is refreshing. She's funny. She refuses to be a victim. She refuses to be held down or back.

Years later, I came across Hurston's autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road. I really liked it, and I'm looking forward to rereading it soon.

Now, being more familiar with Hurston, I recently reread Their Eyes Were Watching God. I loved it, click here for my reflection. Rereading Their Eyes lead me to a collection of Hurston's essays titled You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays. I really liked this collection too. Like Hurston's autobiography, it provides a lot of commentary that is very relevant today while also highlighting the differences between the early and mid twentieth century and the early twenty-first century.

Introduction

I have two friends who created a bell hooks versus Thomas Sowell death match in my mind. Hurtson can take them both. In one friends' language, Hurston experienced for more intersectional discrimination than bell hooks. Hurston grew up in the Jim Crow south. Her love for education, writing, and stories motivated her to rise above the imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. She wondered and found her way to Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance, through Howard University. She was a free spirit and thinker. She wouldn't give up writing and working for any of her three husbands, all divorced.

And still, in the other friends' language, Hurston was a constrained thinker. She talked about a feminism very much constrained to her place in time. Her revealed preferences prove her faith in black people. She saw and predicted the failures of Brown v Board. She worried about the victimization of black people. She was critical of what she called the "Race man" and "Race Champions." She was critical of Communism and the NAACP. She was loyal to facts over feelings. And she believed in individuals:

“I do not share the gloomy thought that Negroes in America are doomed to be stomped out. We will go where the internal drive carries us like everybody else. It is up to the individual.”

Reading List

For a quick sample read "How It Feels to be Colored Me." Hurston's autobiography is excellent. Most of the essays below are included in You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays. After you fall for Hurston and her writing read Their Eyes Were Watching God!

• "How It Feels to be Colored Me" (personal essay)
  
• "The Last Slave Ship" (historical, predates Barracoon)
  
• "High John de Conquer" (folklore)
• "My People, My People" (essay)
• "Seeing the World as It Is" (essay)
  
• "You Don't Know Us Negroes" (essay)
  
• "Art and Such" (essay)
  
• "Crazy for This Democracy" (essay) (for Drew)
• "The Characteristics of Negro Expression" (linguistics essay) (for Forrest)
• Their Eyes Were Watching God (Novel)
• Dust Tracks on a Road (autobiography)

I'm going to check out a collection of her letters next. Then I want to read her "The Eatonville Anthology." After that I want to try more of her fiction.