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?Warm, witty, imaginative.... This is a rich and winning book.??The New Yorker Dust Tracks on a Road is the bold, poignant, and funny autobiography of novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, one of American literature?s most compelling and influential authors. Hurston?s powerful novels of the South?including Jonah?s Gourd Vine and, most famously, Their Eyes Were Watching God? continue to enthrall readers with their lyrical grace, sharp detail, and captivating emotionality. First published in 1942, Dust Tracks on a Road is Hurston?s personal story, told in her own words. The Perennial Modern Classics Deluxe edition includes an all-new forward by Maya Angelou, an extended biography by Valerie Boyd, and a special section featuring the contemporary reviews that greeted the book?s original publication.… (more)
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Here are her words on poverty:
There is something about poverty that smells like death. Dead dreams dropping off the heart like leaves in a dry season and rotting around the feet; impulses smothered too long in the fetid air of underground caves. The soul lives in a sickly air. People can be slave-ships in shoes.
and on justice:
I too yearn for universal justice, but how to bring it about is another thing. It is such a complicated thing, for justice, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. There is universal agreement of the principle, but the application brings on the fight.
But there were lighthearted moments, too, like this, from her childhood, which I shared on Livejournal:
I used to take a seat on top of the gate post and watch the world go by. One way to Orlando ran past my house, so the carriages and cars would pass before me. The movement made me glad to see it. Often the white travelers would hail me, but more often I hailed them, and asked, "Don't you want me to go a piece of the way with you?"
They always did. I know now that I must have caused a great deal of amusement among them, but my self-assurance must have carried the point, for I was always invited to come along. I'd ride up the road for perhaps a half mile, then walk back.
I recommend it, especially if you're interested in ZNH's writing. It's both entertaining and thought provoking.
Here are her words on poverty:
There is something about poverty that smells like death. Dead dreams dropping off the heart like leaves in a dry season and rotting around the feet; impulses smothered too long in the fetid air of underground caves. The soul lives in a sickly air. People can be slave-ships in shoes.
and on justice:
I too yearn for universal justice, but how to bring it about is another thing. It is such a complicated thing, for justice, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. There is universal agreement of the principle, but the application brings on the fight.
But there were lighthearted moments, too, like this, from her childhood, which I shared on Livejournal:
I used to take a seat on top of the gate post and watch the world go by. One way to Orlando ran past my house, so the carriages and cars would pass before me. The movement made me glad to see it. Often the white travelers would hail me, but more often I hailed them, and asked, "Don't you want me to go a piece of the way with you?"
They always did. I know now that I must have caused a great deal of amusement among them, but my self-assurance must have carried the point, for I was always invited to come along. I'd ride up the road for perhaps a half mile, then walk back.
I recommend it, especially if you're interested in ZNH's writing. It's both entertaining and thought provoking.
Review of the Audible Audio edition (2016) narrated by Bahni Turpin (was the Audible Daily Deal on February 19, 2019).
This was an entertaining overview of American roots writer Zora Neale Hurston's (1891-1960) life and career as written from
Still, it is enormously entertaining for the most part and was enhanced by actress Bahni Turpin's vocal performance. Hurston interjects various digressions of anecdotes and folk tales into her through story which provides considerable opportunity for Turpin to perform everything from Boston Irish accents to Fire & Brimstone pulpit speeches. I have only otherwise read Hurston's classic "Their Eyes Were Watching God" and likely some of her other works are now hard to find, but I think they would make for similarly enjoyable Americana roots reading in the present day. I had not known previously that Hurston was a student of anthropologist Franz Boas for instance or about her gathering of information on Hoodoo rituals and practices in Louisiana and those of Voodoo in Haiti.
Having read the introduction, I did feel like I
Quotes: “My grandmother glared at me like open-faced hell and snorted: I vominates a lying tongue.”
“There is an age when children are fit company for spirits. Before they have absorbed too many of earthly things to be able to fly with the unseen things that soar.”
“Rome, the eternal city, meant two different things to my parents. To Mama, it meant you must build it today so it could last through eternity. To Papa, it meant that you could plan to lay some bricks today and you have the rest of eternity to finish it. With all time, why hurry? God had made more time than anything else, anyway. Why act so stingy about it?”
“You cannot have knowledge and worship at the same time. Mystery is the essence of the divine. Gods must keep their distance from men.”
“I was careful to do my classwork. I felt the ladder under my feet.”
“It is one of the tragedies of life that one cannot have all the wisdom one is ever to possess in the beginning. “
“There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.”
“Niagara Falls was just like watching the ocean jump off Pike’s Peak.”
She had a series of dream visions foretelling
She began her career as an anthropologist, collecting black folk tales and songs from the south.
Fiercely independent, with an absolute gift for laugh out loud funny, but often acerbic words: (“My grandmother glared at me like open-faced hell and snorted: I vominates a lying tongue.”)
This memoir was written in 1942 when she was at the top of her game as a writer, and a leader in the Harlem Renaissance.
Besides the memoir, there are three of her essays, including her thoughts on being a ‘race man’. I cannot but wonder if some of these thoughts led to her eventual obscurity in a time when blacks were eager to claim their rightful place after centuries of being treated as lesser.
“Light came to me when I realized that I did not have to consider any racial group as a whole. God made them duck by duck and that was the only way I could see them. I learned that skins were no measure of what was inside people. So none of the Race cliché meant anything anymore. I began to laugh at both white and black who claimed special blessings on the basis of race. Therefore I saw no curse in being black, nor no extra flavor by being white."
Highly recommended. I will be reading more by Zora Neale Hurston.