Zora Neale Hurston

"In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation's history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo's firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave...

In 1925, Zora Neale Hurston was living in New York as a fledgling writer. This collection of stories, found in archives after her death, reveal African American folk culture in Harlem in the 1920s. This book includes eight of Hurston's "lost" Harlem gems.

In this book Zora Neale Hurston records the voices of ordinary people and pays tribute to the richness of Black vernacular--its crisp self-awareness, singular wit, and improvisational wordplay. These folk-tales reflect the joys and sorrows of the African-American experience, celebrate the redemptive power of storytelling, and showcase the continuous presence in America of the Africanized language that flourishes to this day.

From Zora Neale Hurston, one of the most important African American writers of the twentieth century, comes her riveting autobiography-now available in a limited Olive Edition. First published in 1942 at the height of her popularity, Dust Tracks on a Road is Zora Neale Hurston's candid, funny, bold, and poignant autobiography-an imaginative and exuberant account of her childhood in the rural South and her rise to a prominent place among the leading...

"Maybe, now, we used-to-be black African folks can be of some help to our brothers and sisters who have always been white. You will take another look at us and say that we are still black and, ethnologically speaking, you will be right. But nationally and culturally, we are as white as the next one. We have put our labor and our blood into the common causes for a long time. We have given the rest of the nation song and laughter. Maybe now, in this...

In this 1939 novel based on the familiar story of the Exodus, Zora Neale Hurston blends the Moses of the Old Testament with the Moses of black folklore and song to create a compelling allegory of power, redemption, and faith. Narrated in a mixture of biblical rhetoric, black dialect, and colloquial English, Hurston traces Moses's life from the day he is launched into the Nile river in a reed basket, to his development as a great magician, to his transformation...

From the prolific Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston, 'Spunk' and 'Sweat' are thought-provoking short stories set in the heart of African-American communities following the civil war. 'Spunk', first published in 1925, is set in an all-Black community in rural America and poses the question of whether moral strength is more powerful than physical strength. Spunk Banks is described as a 'giant'. He is unafraid of anything or anyone, but...

Zora Neale Hurston's tragic 1926 play Color Struck is a thought-provoking commentary on colorism within the Black community. Set in Florida in 1900, Colour Struck begins on a Jim Crow train carriage. Barely making the train, Emma and John's journey commences with an argument. Emma saw John speaking to a lighter-skinned Black woman, Effie, and was immediately jealous, assuming he was flirting. Throughout the play Emma continues to display animosity...

During her lifetime, Zora Neale Hurston was praised for her writing but condemned for her independence and audacity. Her work fell into obscurity until the 1970s, when Alice Walker rediscovered Hurston's unmarked grave and anthologized her writing in this groundbreaking collection for the Feminist Press. I Love Myself When I Am Laughing... And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive established Hurston as an intellectual leader for future...