|
Books by Zora Neale
Hurston
Their Eyes Were
Watching God /
Mules and Men
/
Jonah’s Gourd Vine
/
Tell
My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica
Zora Neale Hurston : Novels and Stories
/
Dust
Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography
Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston: The Common Bond
* *
* * *
Books by Kalamu ya
Salaam
The Magic of JuJu: An Appreciation of the Black Arts
Movement /
360:
A Revolution of Black Poets
Everywhere Is Someplace Else: A Literary Anthology
/
From A Bend in the River: 100 New Orleans Poets
Our Music Is No Accident /
What Is Life: Reclaiming the Black Blues Self
My Story My Song (CD)
*
* * * *
zora
smiles--kalamu
at
zora neale hurston festival
(part
1 of 2)
i was in 8th grade. my english teacher, mrs.
o. e. nelson, told our class, put your books away, i want you to
hear something. that something was a recording of langston
hughes reciting his poetry with a jazz pianist. at the time i
was still attending church, so you could have called me paul. i
was instantly converted, that evening, immediately after school
was over, i journeyed to the main library, asked one of the
librarians where to find langston hughes. i expected to find a
book of poetry. i wanted to find that poem about a man who died
in harlem, his widow going around begging for money because the
family was destitute and, as langston poetically put it, a poor
man ain't got no right to die.
when i turned the corner in search of the shelf to which the
librarian had directed me, i got the shock of my young life.
there wasn't just "a" book of poetry, there was a
whole shelf full of books by langston hughes. i said,
"whoa!!!" and the rest, as the cliché goes, is
history.
under hughes' tutelage i set to reading the harlem
renaissance, and russian writers, and japanese writers, and
chinese writers, and caribbean writers, and south american
writers, and, in impressive detail, african writers--bloke
modisane and peter abrahams' a wreath for udomo were
particularly important touchstones. hughes' two autobiographies
set me to flowing, and his many anthologies (including two
anthologies of african literature) were my graduate courses. by
the time i finished high school in 1964, my shakespeare was
shaky but my post-colonial reading of third world literature was
deeper than that of the average phd in english. and most
significant among that deepitude was zora neale hurston.
i, like many, many other people, was enthralled by their eyes
were watching god, but for me it was her "moses"
novel that had me smiling and slapping the air. zora exemplified
the african aesthetic of personalizing the spiritual, of
affirming the folk, the way we talked, walked, loved,
fat-mouthed, trembled in fear at moments of capture or dug deep
into our sack of gumption to confront the odiousness of evil,
especially when manifest as some authority figure telling us
what we couldn't do—we didn't come through slavery to suffer
re-enslavement. officially emancipated during the civil war,
came reconstruction we rushed to form ourselves into
self-determined communities: black towns and such all across the
black belt, wanted more than a town or city, worked hard for a
state (hence pap singleton and the exodusters setting out for
john brown's kansas, or some other lower mid-west state for to
make us a real black home, oklahoma would do, etc.), and by then
some of us were beginning to espouse that what we really needed
was a nation. it was out of this late 1800's/turn of the century
movement that zora was spawned.
eatonville, which is where i am as i type this report,
was one of the many small black towns started by ex-enslaved
black folk and their immediate descendants. eatonville where
zora's father was elected and re-elected and re-elected mayor.
eatonville, florida where the flora was green year round and
black folk had everything they needed to be fully human: land,
sunshine, each other and some self-determined space. thus zora
who wasn't scared of nothing and felt that the whole world was,
if not her pearl, for sure the world was her oyster--just get
out the way, she'd shuck it open and snatch the pearls for
herself. zora. eatonville.
eatonville is now a suburb of and surrounded by disney
world and overwhelmed by folk hypnotized by mickey mouse
versions of social advancement. located in a state that is the
home of the right white to vote and the black struggle to keep
the right from stealing and/or suppressing the black ballot.
florida the sunshine state where four hurricanes hit in 2004,
one after the other, some doing a circle dance. here we are in
late january 2005 celebrating zora neale, wonder what she would
have made of all of this?
the festival opened on wednesday night with a performance
by nikki giovanni. notice i said performance rather than poetry
reading. i was not there, but dr. jerry ward reports that nikki
had the house rocking, rolling, chortling and guffawing.
thursday noon when i landed there were transportation snafus, so
i was waiting at the airport for a shuttle that finally arrived
like emancipation getting to texas, which is to say, it got
there late, hence juneteenth, hence the poetry workshop session
i was scheduled to do was already in progress when i got there. my
esteemed colleague dr. jerry ward was filling in until i ran
in, dropped my bags, and launched into an hour-and-change of
poetry discussions with the handful of participants. we ended up
having a wonderful exchange and folk seemed genuinely
appreciative—so appreciative that they bought all of the
360-degrees of black poetry anthologies that i lugged with me to
the event.
the workshop made me want to do more workshopping, wanted to
stretch out and talk poetry talk with folk, extend and exchange
philosophy and aesthetic arguments and discussions. after an
hour i was just getting warmed up. one gentleman who was there
simply to accompany his friend who was operating the p.a. system
was even smiling as he was drawn into our discussion, chuckling
about how i was even able to include one of his favorite
singers, r. kelly, into the net of black poetics, all of
which gives you an inkling of an idea of how my emphasis on the
folk side of the aesthetic might intersect with zora's views
(not to mention her little trouble with some folk who thought it
"immoral" and that zora had no business loving a young
man many years her junior—don't go there kalamu!
yeah, well, you know, kalamu is myopic and
don't see no trespassing signs. some of this stuff we think is a
new issue is really an ageless issue, something that been going
on since some humans took joy and happiness in enjoying the
happiness of the act of procreation without actually aiming to
do any actual procreating.).
all in all, it was a good workshop, and some
of the participants were regular zora festival attendees who
made an annual pilgrimage to eatonville.
afterwards, while jerry and i were waiting for the
shuttle, woody king and elizabeth van dyke
sauntered up. woodie is the single most important figure on the
production side of post-50s black theatre work. he is
responsible for so many productions and ideas i am hard pressed
to even begin listing his achievements, which include,
appropriate to this festival, ntozake shange's colored girls.
we embrace, and true to form, woody tells me about an idea he
has for a baraka celebration that would involve about 40
poets, and asks me to participate. i, of course, sign up
immediately. (afterwards while commuting to the hotel i express
to jerry my adage about the importance of being on the
scene to be seen, cause when one lives in the cultural
hinterlands of the united states, outside the orbit of the
cultural axis of boston-new york-philly-dc, then it is easy to
be overlooked, not out of any malicious intent, but simply
because: out of sight, out of mind.)
woody saw me before i saw him, saw me and called out with his
ebullient hailing of good cheer on a broadly smiling face. we
always laugh and enjoy each other's company, but even so, had he
not seen me, all bets are off as to whether i would have gotten
a call. that's just the way it is. and this is why i tell folk
who want to know how to get invited to events such as this, you
have to make the effort to attend, you have to reach out to
folk, get to know them. share space and time with people, and
festivals such as the zora neale hurston festival are
precisely the opportunities to get to know folk because they are
small enough to strike up a conversation and hang with a wide
variety of folk, as was my brief contact with woody king.
the timing was beautiful, his master class on black theatre was
the same time as my workshop, and while i was staying until
sunday morning, woody was actually on his way to the airport
because he had to get back to new york that night in order to
get down to dc early friday morning for vantile whitfield's
funeral. i had the opportunity to share some time with vantile
at some conference or the other (i can't even remember where it
was) and we exchanged impressions of people and places we knew
in common.
vantile was an amazing avatar of black
participation in the national cultural agenda and in particular
was responsible for a moment in the late seventies and
throughout the eighties when black folk had some significant
stroke at the national endowment of the arts, a stroke which is
long since diminished as the republicans have decided that the
government ought not be in the business of supporting the arts.
guns yes. arts no. anyway, vantile will be missed.
dr. ward and i, hung around a bit after taking care of some
business at the festival office and eventually caught the
shuttle, which predictably was running late, headed over to the
hilton Altamonte hotel where jerry was already registered. jerry
and i have a standing thursday evening dinner date. this was
thursday, and though we were not in new orleans, it was dinner
time, except if we ate, we wouldn't be able to make john scott's
talk, which was scheduled for 7pm. damn. it was 6:30-something
when we got to the hotel.
fortunately, john scott was in the
lobby, so we were able to hug and exchange lengthy greetings.
his eminence, dr. richard long, was also at the table. i
kissed his ring. literally. i was being funny, but not
sarcastic. richard long is a learned and important african
american intellectual who is the resident chief consultant to
st.peter for all the black folk of any import who seek
admittance to the heavenly hereafter.
richard long got the 411 on everybody and has
a richly entertaining command of the english language, sort of a
combination of hip college professor, formerly-worldly methodist
bishop, and baldwin-esce witness of post-30s black artistic
life, all of which is to say, he is witty, intelligent, and
familiar with a rich diversity of black lifestyles, including a
familiarity with that aspect of black life characterized simply
as "the life" by hip black folk who know what
"the life" is (a definition of which i will not go
into here because, as malcolm x wisely noted, those who know
don't say, and those who say don't know). anyway, dr. long is
also the chief consultant and behind the scenes force guiding
the ongoing development of the zora neale hurston festival.
shortly john scott pulled my coat and suggested we head
over to the hospitality room to pick up our festival
credentials, at which point we were given all-access badges and
gift baskets, again, literal hand-woven baskets that included
programs, posters, and a zora festival t-shirt, which i am
wearing while completing this report.
john had a hacking cough that caused me some alarm. i inquired,
he said it was a result of 40 years of doing metal sculpture
without a mask and of spending a childhood in an area that the
government finally acknowledged about ten years ago had
hazardous pollutants. 40% of his lung tissue was scarred. he was
getting treatment. fortunately there was no cancer. i wish i
could say i was relieved but john's cough was persistent. and
deep. and tragic. he's a great artist. a magnificent sculptor. a
man deeply dedicated not simply to his artwork, but also to our
people. i don't want to lose him, but he is sixty-some years old
and that rough cough does not portend good things.
a few minutes later, john and crew embarked to wherever his
presentation was scheduled. jerry and i remained to a booth in
the lobby restaurant. yall have heard my attitude toward food on
the road—in most of the American hinterland cuisine is but one
step removed from road kill, particularly in the midwest, where
all-american cooking means the absolute avoidance of herbs,
condiments (except for oceans of ketchup, and sprinklings of
salt&pepper), flavorful combinations, etc.
i generally order soup or salad and fish with
vegetables and rice or baked potato, depending on how deep in
squareville i am, there might not be any fish available other
than breaded fillets of something that used to swim twenty years
ago before it was captured, cut up, frozen and packaged in
cellophane. jerry, who is going on two years of living in new
orleans, looked up, after a quick perusal of what was offered as
a menu, and, with a straight face, said to me: it's hard to eat
in other places after eating in new orleans. i didn't even
laugh—it's not funny what some people do to food in the name
of cooking, not funny at all.
the hilton altamonte springs is an expensive,
second-class hotel masquerading as a quality establishment. when
registering, i inquired about wireless, they only had wireless
in the lobby, and not even throughout the lobby, only at the far
end near the room that they deluded themselves into calling a
business center. their rates were obscene—a dollar a page for
printing. fifty-three cents a minute to use a computer. faxing
was . . . i asked about ethernet/high speed connections, i was
told the rooms had dial-up. was this a hilton or a shill-ton?
the first day i was in a room on the first floor about five feet
too far away to get wireless. on the second day i moved to a
room on the fifth floor that had a high speed connection. it's
shameful. you've got motel with wireless and here was a big ass
hilton, up next to disneyworld where the advertised rates were
(and i kid you not) $189 a night (thankfully, the festival rates
were less than 40% of the laughable listing on the bathroom
door). oh well, that's life on the road. friday morning i heard
a sister complaining because she couldn't get a bagel in the
restaurant. no bagels. a hampton inn in texas serves
complimentary bagels and juice, and an upscale hilton up next to
disneyworld . . . nevermind.
on friday morning i was sitting in the lobby content to
work on the internet for two or three hours when valerie boyd
strides through and hollas. i put the computer aside. she
reaches out to shake hands. i told her i had to get up and give
her a hug. she smiles and gives me that beautiful big-eyed smile
of hers. i admire this sister to the highest. valerie says she
is heading over to the civic center for her presentation, she's
catching a cab, would i like to join her or was i planning to do
something else. i saved the file i was working on and prepared
to join her.
on the way over we talked about life, caught up since we last
spoke, which, if i remember correctly, was at the national
black arts festival in 2003. valerie is teaching at a
university in athens, georgia, an hour and a half outside of
atlanta, she has spent most of her professional life as a
working journalist and editor in atlanta. she was in her second
year of teaching journalism. we shared classroom stories. i told
her i wasn't sure if i could deal with the structure and
strictures of teaching college, especially compared to the
freedom i had in teaching creative writing and digital video as
an elective to high school students.
i explained our use of the story circle
concept and she told me about her classes at a school that was
severely lacking in diversity—one black student out of
sixteen. valerie said last year she had a class that not only
had one black student but on top of that all of the other
students were white and from georgia. i ain't particular about
white bread, so you know i wouldn't last a week in such a
monoculture. but everybody got their own cross to tote.
turns out the panel that valerie was doing was the major panel
of the day. she was to be joined by cheryl wall, whom i
had met years ago and whose re-acquaintance i made yesterday on
the shuttle when going to the hotel. dr. wall is also working
with linda holmes on an anthology about toni cade
bambara, another great sister writer whom i deeply admire. a
combination interview/essay i did with and on toni is included
in the manuscript that cheryl and linda are piloting. the third
person on the panel is dr. lois hurston gaston ("my
grandfather was zora's brother").
what was scheduled as a zora neale hurston biography panel was
turned into a television program with a talk show format hosted
by a veteran, black reporter who was retired from nbc and was
now hosting three different cable television shows. his
professional resume was far deeper than his knowledge of zora
neale hurston so we had to endure some ridiculously uninformed
questions, but each of the panelists handled it with the
graciousness that black women have developed over centuries of
dealing with the self-inflated egos of negro men whose
illusionary importance was just that, illusionary, but rather
than deflate our little balloons, our sisters have developed the
charming craft of gently deflecting us like playfully bouncing
beach balls from person to person at a pool party.
as the cameras rolled, the trio of knowledgeable
panelists gave nary an indication of just how doofus many of the
questions were. they simply parried with anecdotes and
insightful commentary. indeed, partially because my man didn't
know much, the session offered some insights that we might not
have received if the program had proceeded as most literary
panels do. so there was a modicum of value in what he did
because of the hip way the panelists responded.
at one point there was a relatively long exchange about zora's
age. i say relatively long because every 15 minutes or so there
was a break in the proceedings ("we'll be right back"
blah-blah-blah / "welcome back, we're..."
blah-blah-blah). anyway valerie and dr. walls spoke about
discovering that zora had shaved ten years off her age and, as
to be expected, once those ten years were elided, zora never
added them back on.
dr. walls was the first to definitively pin down the discrepancy
and did the sleuthing to establish zora's true birthdate, and
valerie was the one who figured out when it first happened and
offered a plausible explanation for why zora had reduced her
age. the short of it was that zora was in her twenties, then
living in baltimore and had not finished high school, which she
desperately wanted to do, however the baltimore public high
schools had a cut off age for students of 18, so valuing
education more than biographical accuracy, zora reduced her age
in order to gain admittance to high school.
the tv moderator tried to start some shoo-shoo mess and said he
wanted to talk about zora's "dark side" except he
didn't know what to ask, so he just asked zora's relative if the
family ever talked about any of the family secrets or . . . dr.
gaston told him the family was secretive and didn't talk much
about those kinds of things. he was going for a jerry springer
moment, but the sisters weren't having it, no one was descending
to the level of lurid entertainment, although i am sure, had my
man been more hip, there could have been some frank and
forthright discussion about some of what is sometimes termed the
problematic aspects of zora's life.
posted 1 February 2005*
* * * *
|
Zora
Neale Hurston, folklorist and writer, became a central
figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston was born and educated
in Eatonville, Florida, the first incorporated black city in the
United States. At the age of 16, she left her home to work with
a traveling theatrical company. The company ended up in New York
City , where Hurston studied anthropology at Columbia
University. She then attended Howard University as well as
Barnard College.
In
1931, Hurston collaborated with Langston Hughes to write the
play
Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts. She
wrote her most acclaimed work,
Their Eyes Were Watching God
in 1937. After writing her autobiography (Dust Tracks on a
Road) in 1942, she went on to teach at what is now North
Carolina Central University. Her work, revived by feminists in
the 1970s, has gained her considerable recognition as one of the
most important black writers in American history.
|
 |
* * *
* *
 |
Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography
By Robert E. Hemenway (Author) / Foreword
by Alice Walker
Zora
Neale Hurston—novelist, folklorist,
anthropologist, and child of the rural black
South—transformed each hour of her life into
something bubbling, exuberant, and brimming
with her joy in just being. Robert Hemenway
captures the effervescence of this daughter
of the Harlem Renaissance in his brilliant
and original literary biography. He provides
for the first time a full length study of
Hurston's life and art, using unpublished
letters and manuscripts and personal
interviews with many who knew her.
His
sensitive reconstruction of Miss Hurston's
life details her two marriages, her
relations with her patron, Mrs. R. Osgood
Mason, her mentor, Franz Boas, and her
friend Langston Hughes; her indictment on a
morals charge in 1948; and the sad, final
years leading to her death as a penniless
occupant of a Florida welfare home. But most
important, his interpretation of her art and
scholarship, including her extraordinary
novels, autobiography, and popular treatment
of black folkways, underscores her deep and
abiding commitment to the black folk
tradition.
|
* * * *
*
|
Ida Cox (February 25, 1896 –
November 10, 1967) was an
African American
singer and
vaudeville performer, best known for her
blues performances and
recordings. She was billed as "The
Uncrowned Queen of the Blues" Cox was born
in February, 1896 as Ida Prather in
Toccoa,
Habersham County, Georgia (Toccoa was in
Habersham County, not yet
Stephens County at the time), the
daughter of Lamax and Susie (Knight)
Prather, and grew up in
Cedartown, Georgia, singing in the local
African
Methodist Church
choir.
She
left home to tour with travelling
minstrel shows, often appearing in
blackface into the 1910s; she married
fellow minstrel performer Adler Cox. By
1920, she was appearing as a headline act at
the 81 Theatre in
Atlanta, Georgia; another headliner at
that time was
Jelly Roll Morton. . . .—Wikipedia
|
 |
|
Ida Cox—Wild Women Don’t Have
the Blues
Wild Women
Don’t Have the Blues
By
Ida Cox
I hear these women raving 'bout their monkey
men
About their trifling husbands and their no
good friends
These poor women sit around all day and moan
Wondering why their wandering papa's don't
come home
But wild women don't worry, wild women don't
have no blues
Now when you've got a man, don't never be on
the square
'Cause if you do he'll have a woman
everywhere
I never was known to treat no one man right
I keep 'em working hard both day and night
'Cause wild women don't worry, wild women
don't have their blues
I've got a disposition and a way of my own
When my man starts kicking I let him find
another home
I get full of good liquor, walk the streets
all night
Go home and put my man out if he don't act
right
Wild women don't worry, wild women don't
have their blues
You never get nothing by being an angel
child
You better change your ways and get real
wild
I wanna tell you something, I wouldn't tell
you a lie
Wild women are the only kind that ever get
by
wild women don't worry, wild women don't
have their blues. |
* * * * *
Video: "South Side Story"
—Ta-Nehisi
Coates author of
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to
Manhood
discusses Michelle Obama with Paul Coates an outspoken publisher
and former Black Panther—his father.
“American Girl" (Ta Nehesi Coates)
When Michelle Obama told a
Milwaukee campaign rally last February, "For the first time in
my adult life, I am proud of my country," critics derided her as
another Angry Black Woman. But the only truly radical
proposition put forth by Obama, born and raised in Chicago's
storied South Side, is the idea of a black community fully
vested in the country at large, and proud of the American dream. * * *
* *
* * * * *
|
The Warmth of Other Suns
The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
By Isabel Wilkerson
Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a sharecropper's
wife, left Mississippi for Milwaukee in
1937, after her cousin was falsely accused
of stealing a white man's turkeys and was
almost beaten to death. In 1945, George
Swanson Starling, a citrus picker, fled
Florida for Harlem after learning of the
grove owners' plans to give him a "necktie
party" (a lynching). Robert Joseph Pershing
Foster made his trek from Louisiana to
California in 1953, embittered by "the
absurdity that he was doing surgery for the
United States Army and couldn't operate in
his own home town." Anchored to these three
stories is Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist
Wilkerson's magnificent, extensively
researched study of the "great migration,"
the exodus of six million black Southerners
out of the terror of Jim Crow to an
"uncertain existence" in the North and
Midwest. Wilkerson deftly incorporates
sociological and historical studies into the
novelistic narratives of Gladney, Starling,
and Pershing settling in new lands, building
anew, and often finding that they have not
left racism behind. The drama, poignancy,
and romance of a classic immigrant saga
pervade this book, hold the reader in its
grasp, and resonate long after the reading
is done. |
 |
*
* * * *
 |
Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
|
* *
* * *
|
Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
|
 |
* *
* * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* *
* * *
ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
updated 1 October 2007
|
