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Books by Zora Neale
Hurston
Their Eyes Were
Watching God /
Mules and Men
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Jonah’s Gourd Vine
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Tell
My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica
Zora Neale Hurston : Novels and Stories
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Dust
Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography
Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston: The Common Bond
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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
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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)
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zora
smiles--kalamu
at
zora neale hurston festival
(part
2 of 2)
valerie boyd in particular had a ton
of information which she had synthesized into the best single
work on the life of zora. valerie's book is "wrapped in
rainbows" and it an unabashed, informed and female-focused
interpretation of zora's life and not simply a factual
biography. valerie was not writing a dissertation that she had
to defend before a committee of ignorant experts—at one point
dr. walls told of one of her advisors at harvard who was
supposed to be on her committee who professed he didn't know who
zora was and another who thought it insightful on his part to
compare zora to f. scott fitzgerald. when the audience knowingly
giggled at the absurdity, dr. walls demurely offered a partial
explanation, "understand, that was quite a while ago."
and that's true. for many, many years zora was ignored and
overlooked. today, now that their eyes were watching god
is required reading for eleven-graders in ap english classes
nationwide, we often forget that zora was once totally
forgotten. thanks, initially in large part to robert
hemingway and alice walker, there has been an immense
revival of zora as a seminally important black writer. indeed,
zora is better known now than ever before.
valerie reminded the audience that today we have the example of
zora to inspire us, but zora did not have any examples to
inspire her. i both agree and disagree with this assessment.
here i need to remind folk that if we look to the mainstream, it
is absolutely the case that there are no recognizable
prototypes for zora, but if we look on the black hand side,
we can find an unbroken and important path of black-oriented
female artists whose focus was the black community and whose aim
was self-determination.
for example the twenties (commonly called the harlem
renaissance, but much more accurately identified as the garvey
era, stretching roughly from the end of world war 1 to the
beginning of the great depression) gave us the example of so
many important women in music that the era is known as the classic
blues era—chief among these musical matriarchs are bessie
smith and ma rainey, but there were many, many
others. these prototypes were mythologized in alice walker's the
color purple and in angela davis' book on blues women [Blues
Legacies and Black Feminists], as
well as in an essay i did called "do right women: black
women, eroticism and classic blues."
here is where we find independent,
self-determined black women making a stand. given zora's
pedigree and temperament, i am certain classic blues women
were a big influence on zora. moreover, i think zora would
have also been familiar with the writings of frances ellen
harper, who predated paul dunbar, although i am equally
certain that harper's christian and temperance themes might not
have been quite the brew that zora imbibed. nevertheless, my
point is that there were precursors, influences, examples for
zora outside of the mainstream, which is, after all, where zora
was located for all of her earthly life, i.e. outside american
white bread ordinary and deep in the funk of black field folk.
too often those of us in the here and now somehow assume that we
are the first negroes to really think and act freely, that
before us was all woe-is-me, what-ise-gonna-do-? don't we know
that as long as there have been black folk there have been hip
folk, somewhere, some of us quite clear about ourselves and
our relationship to the world? are we so successfully
propagandized by our captors that we really believe that free
black thought didn't exist before slave masters?!!! Didn’t
exist before us, their educated-bastard offspring? it is
significant, but not surprising, that zora was a woman on a
mission, a mission to collect and thereby elevate negroes souls.
as valerie boyd broke it down during that talk show
panel—zora was making movies of black folk in the twenties. in
the twenties. zora neale hurston got hold of a movie camera and
recorded us. black folk. valerie found the footage in the
library of congress. i remember valerie showing some of it at a
session at the national black arts festival. my point is that
zora is stellar, a stellar continuance of a timeless
tradition of black intellectual/artistic resistance to the
status quo. folk upliftment. unapologetic field hollas
magnified as academic/artistic achievement.
during one of the numerous breaks in the panel, faye williams
of sisterspace in dc came up to the front. i, as is often
my want, was sitting on the first row. after greeting the
panelists, faye turned to me and we hugged and exchanged good
cheer. sisterspace was evicted last year and have been going
thru some changes getting themselves re-situated. faye said
there were some lights glimmering around the bend—i hope it
all works out.
we talked a bit about the fate of bookstores.
faye was quick to point out that the bookstore per se was simply
a location to do their community building work, a space for
womyn, programs for the elderly, literacy. they made their money
via contracts with school systems to supply books not from
through the door sales. and then we talked a bit about the old
days, back in the late seventies when i was invited to speak in
tallahassee at the university and faye was on the planning
committee and was one half of the welcoming duo that picked me
up at the airport.
we have been a long, long time on this road.
i thought about walking down u street in dc, coming from sylvia
hill's house where i was staying, headed to howard university to
hook up with haile gerima, and i passed a sign for sisterspace
books, and was curious, but it was closed at that particular
hour in the early morning, and i made a mental note to return
later, which i did, and there was reunited with faye, and that
must have been six or seven years ago, i had not known faye was
running that set, had simply been interested and curious, and
followed up, but, you know, i really believe, really, really
believe, if you get on the path you will meet others on the same
path, and all you have to do is get out there and travel the
spaceways, like-minded folk will be encountered.
all kinds of folk were swirling around the place. a duo of two
middle-aged white men who have spent years trying to make a zora
neale hurston movie. a sister who is organizing a festival in
may in fort pierce (hope i got that right), florida, the
burial spot of zora. and that was just on the first two rows
where i was.
all three of the women on the panel had books. dr. wall did two
volumes collecting zora’s work for the american library
series. every black library needs to have one, if not both of
those volumes. dr. gatson has speak, so you can speak again:
the life of zora neale hurston, a book that includes a cd on
which you can hear zora’s voice. i’ve already mentioned
valerie’s rainbow book, but i’ll re-mention it because the
book is just that important.
at the conclusion, i felt like a pilgrim in mecca or a baptist
minister spending easter sunday in jerusalem, i felt fulfilled.
one last comment. i can’t resist. the image of this trio of
sisters was so negroidal. their visages warmed my heart, made me
smile.
dr. wall had beautiful baby braids. valerie had two foot long
dreads. dr. gatson had a medium length afro. i know the old
adage about not judging a book by its cover, but i also know the
conformity damn near required by the academy, and for these
three women to present themselves with unpressed hair is more
than simply a stylistic statement. natural hair is defiance. ask
condoleezza. i think yall catch my drift.
the next panel was a doozy. dr. richard long was moderating dr.
eleanor traylor and amiri baraka. from the giddy-up we knew we
were in for a ride when eleanor started off by describing how
the city she inhabits, a city known for it’s maples, cherry
trees, oaks, and such other wonderful flora was being overrun by
bushes. aug man, you should have been there. you know how the
old folks can talk bad about you with a mouth full of honey,
well, this sugarly sarcastic opening achieved the perfect
balance of insult and innocuousness, especially when she
described how the citizens had tried to stamp out the bushes but
they were proliferating.
it was an absolute scream. and the session
ended, at dr. traylor insistence, with baraka reading his poem
“in the tradition,” a read which grew in intensity as he
progressed through the pages long ode. at first he was settling
into a perfunctory reading (and of course amiri’s perfunctory
is most poets’ excellent), but before he had thrown the first
page to the floor, he kind of hunched forward a little, caught
fire and was gone like sun ra on a good night. afterwards john
scott told me baraka’s reading reminded him of coltrane. yes,
it was that smoking.
there were long exchanges about spirituality and self
determination and independence, and zora’s request to dr.
dubois that a cemetery be constructed to memorialize our race.
eleanor and baraka were trading intellectual volleys, and dr.
long sat above the fray like a field judge, occasionally
inserting a word or two, just to keep the ball in play. by the
time they finished, the civic center was abuzz. all was well.
for sure zora was smiling.
that was a wrap. there was a night program scheduled but i had
resolved to watch serena play the australian finals at 9pm. by
now, most of you know she won, some of you saw the match, and
all of us feel somewhat empowered by her example of fortitude
and determination. we’ve had so little to cheer about of late,
serena’s win was an important cup of cool water as we traverse
through the bush of the opening years of the 21st century.
saturday was the closing day of the festival. it was
anti-climatic as far as i am concerned. the zora festival is
fighting through these tough times. they have decentralized the
events in an effort to broaden their support base, and though it
is effective as a fundraiser it has created all kinds of
logistic nightmares.
for example the magnificent photographer/installation artist carrie
mae weems is here, but i have not seen her. don’t know
exactly where her exhibit is. and unless she is headed out to
the airport 7:30am sunday morning will probably not see her at
all. the hotel is one part of the countryside. the civic center
is over somewhere else. eatonville is miles away. who knows
where the exhibit spot is. the shuttle runs on a combination of
cpt and soon come. the staff is over taxed with
responsibilities. this year’s event runs more because all the
participants do their best to make it run and to be of good
cheer as problem after problem pops up. we all are committed to
making it happen. committed to confronting and overcoming
whatever snafus. all is not well, but every little thing is
going to be alright.
general manager n. y. nathiri has successfully handled the
never-ending sisyphusian task of rolling the zora festival rock
up the never-ending hill of floridian indifference and
occasional hostility. 16 years is a long time to battle ghosts
and paddy rollers, to outfox government officials who
not-so-secretly believe our people ought to be in zoos and
penitentiaries. but n.y. and crew have done the do and deserve
kudos for holding on and keeping on.
saturday morning some folk elected to go to the “hattitude”
event, which was based on the happening of hats, the dizzying
array of stylistic choices offered up by black folk with
self-designed skypieces, especially those matronly mash-ups
which are a combination of crown and spaceships, known to land
atop mature heads on sunday mornings. i understand there was a
contest and i’m sure it was delightful, however i decide to
attend the outdoor event.
the outdoor festival rolled along as outdoor festival do. a
quarter block long stretch of food booths (mostly fried fish and
chicken wings) and craft booths of all sorts, including a dj
selling soul compilation mix-cds, which undoubtedly were
bootlegs. i believe he had about 18 different mixes. a lot of
african crafts and material. saw some really attractive malian
mudcloth. the big attraction was isaac hayes at 3pm.
i looked forward to that. spent most of my
time in the new children’s library typing up part one of this
report. about 2:30 or so wondered over toward the stage, ran
into baraka buying beer, we walked through the crowd to the
opposite side of the stage, to get to which we had to loop
around through a good-natured, smiling throng of negroes. that
felt good as it always feels good to be anywhere bunches of us
are with food, music and good vibes. caught up to jerry ward and
eleanor traylor who were also waiting for isaac hayes.
about five minutes after 3pm, ike’s procession rolls up to the
stage. he is wearing a black leather kofi perched atop his bald
dome. once onstage he drops a lengthy introduction taking us
back to his childhood and early years in music, turns out most
of his band is stuck in atlanta where there was an ice storm. so
some quick adjustments are made, and a make-shift band is
constructed. they do mostly isaac hayes hits.
i had been looking forward to hearing a set
like three years ago when al jarreau was incandescent, but
without his band, there was only so much ike could do. so i
split, bought a seafood plate and eventually made it back to the
hotel. i turned in early around 7pm, deciding to skip the
closing gala featuring maya angelou. i’m sure it was a grand
and glorious occasion, but not for me.
i’m still all kinds of hyped behind the zora panel. seeing all
kinds of possibilities. it’s 4am now. i got up about 11:30pm
and will work straight through until it’s time to go back
home. another one bites the dust. and that’s my report on the 16th
annual zora neale hurston festival of the arts and humanities.
posted 1 February 2005*
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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.
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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.
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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
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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. |
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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. * * *
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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. |
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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'."
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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.
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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)
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Ancient African Nations
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Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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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
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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