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Summary:

When she died in poverty and obscurity in 1960, all of Zora Neale Hurston's books were out of print. Today her groundbreaking works, suffused with the culture and traditions of African-Americans and the poetry of black speech, have won her recognition as one of the most significant African-American writers. This volume, with its companion, Novels & Stories brings together for the first time all of Hurston's best writings in one authoritative set. "Folklore is the arts of the people", Hurston wrote, "before they find out that there is any such thing as art". A pioneer of African-American ethnography who did graduate study in anthropology with the renowned Franz Boas, Hurston devoted herseif to preserving the black folk heritage. In Mules and Men (1935), the first book of African-American folklore written by an African-American, she returned to her native Florida and to New Orleans to record stories and sermons, blues and work songs, children's games, courtship rituals, and formulas of hoodoo doctors. This classic work is presented here with the original illustrations by the great Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias. Tell My Horse (1938), part ethnography, part travel book, vividly recounts the survival of African religion in Jamaican obeah and Haitian voodoo in the 1930s. Keenly alert to political and intellectual currents, Hurston went beyond superficial exoticism to explore the role of these religious systems in their societies. The text is illustrated by 26 photographs, many of them taken by Huston. Her extensive transcriptions of Creole songs here accompanied by new translation. A special feature of this volume is Hurston's controversial 1942 autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road. Withconsultation by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., it is presented here for the first time as she intended, restoring passages omitted by the original publisher because of political controversy, sexual candor, or fear of libel. Included in an appendix are four additional chapters, one never before published, that represent earlier stages of Hurston's conception of the book. Twenty-two essays, from "The Eatonville Anthology" (1926) to "Court Order Can't Make Races Mix" (1955), demonstrate the range of Hurston's concerns as they cover subjects from religion, music, and Harlem slang to Jim Crow and American democracy. The chronology of Hurston's life prepared for this edition sheds fresh light on many aspects of her career. In addition, this volume contains detailed notes and a brief essay on the texts.

Table of Contents:

• Mules and men
• Tell my horse
• Dust tracks on a road
• Selected articles.

Author/Creator:

Hurston, Zora Neale

Languages:

English

Language Notes:

Item content: English

Main Work:

Works [of Hurston, Z.N.] (Selections) (1995)

Related Series:

Library of America; [volume] 75

Subjects:

Hurston, Zora Neale
Authors, American > 20th century > Biography
Folklorists > United States > Biography
African American authors > Biography
African Americans > Folklore
1900-1999
Folklorists
African American authors
African Americans
Authors, American
United States

Genres:

Biographies

General Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. 981-1001).

Physical Description:

1001 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm.

Call Numbers:

GR55.H86 A3 1995

ISBNs:

0940450844

Other Standard Numbers:

International Article Number: 9780940450844

Library of Congress Control Numbers:

94021384

OCLC Numbers:

30593769