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Kate
Unregistered User
(12/17/01 8:40:20 pm)
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Zora Neale Hurston (Or: "My Homework!")
Well, here's a simple 'homework' question from me. I'm writing a review of the new collection by Zora Neale Hurston, EVERY TONGUE GOT TO CONFESS: NEGRO FOLK-TALES FROM THE GULF STATES (Harper Collins, gathered by Hurston around 1926 - 1929 and not published then, because the publisher then wanted her to 'edit and contextualize' narratives she wanted kept 'pure'). In any case, I am curious if anyone else on the board has yet read this.
Secondly, does anyone know, off the cuff, if Hurston's works were ever based on any traditional tales? I haven't read her work since college, which was (gulp) ages ago.
Midori: you will see there is no specific question in here! I'm just curious to know what anyone knows. Period. At all. Out of curiousity. I'm enjoying the great humor and mystery in these narratives, but I don't really have a background in knowing their history and such. The introduction by Carla Kaplan is very good. The book does not say who she is, but I'm looking . . . Anyone else read it yet?
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Kate
Unregistered User
(12/17/01 9:00:43 pm)
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okay, so
I've done a bit of my own homework and discovered that Hurston did collect other tales, in MULES AND MEN (I think that's the title). But I don't know much about her novels' connection to folklore, though I do know some about her all-too-brief life . . . I'm still curious if anyone does know, particularly when it comes to THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD, if there is any folklore connection.
(The book uses the terms folktale and folklore by the way, never fairy tales . . .)
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ZMethos
Registered User
(12/18/01 7:50:15 am)
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Re: okay, so
Well, remember that Hurston was an anthropologist first, which is why she preferred the terms "folklore" and "folktale"--the minute difference between a fairy tale and a folktale was a big enough gap for her, at least. Although Publisher Weekly's write-up review still slated the book under fiction, I guess because although she gathered these stories while traveling through the South, they are still stories, many of them related to the Uncle Remus stories. Note that because Hurston desired to be true to the tellings of these stories, they don't "sound" like her novels--she does not lend them her voice, trying instead to use the voices from which they came.
~M. Pepper
(maybe I'll go dig out my ZNH notes. . .)
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ZMethos
Registered User
(12/18/01 8:06:50 am)
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Re: okay, so
Well, I have my notes from when we studied Hurston, along with Jean Toomer--they make a good duo for compare/contrast, btw. One big question/topic was whether their work was "universal" or had "universal appeal" (or whether it stood apart from "mass culture" or "popular culture"). . . Are these singularly "Black" folktales? Does the attempt to preserve these usually oral tales make them more "authentic" in some way than other stories?
Putting Hurston in context of the Harlem Renaissance is also one way to look at things.
But if you wanted to think of it in terms of folk/fairy tales--does Hurston produce here a "Black" fairy tale? And if so, does it reach the masses? Is she even trying to reach the masses, or is she simply trying to preserve a culture before its oral history can die out? (Is she playing Grimm here? Going around, gathering tales?) What're the differences between a European fairy tale and an African-American folktale?
Wow, now my mind is racing. . . Could be a very interesting paper!
~M. Pepper
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Carrie
Unregistered User
(12/18/01 8:20:43 am)
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Zora
Kate:
You might want to look at her autobiography "Dust Track on a Road." I love her collections and was so enamoured by her work that I dug up her autobiography years ago. Two weeks before she graduated from Barnard -- Dr. Boas sent her south on a fellowship to collect Negro Folklore. She was a member of the American Folk-lore Society, American Ethnological Society, and the American Anthropological Society.
Here's a few snippets:
I enjoyed collecting folk-tales and I believe the people from whom I collected them enjoyed the telling of them, just as much as I did the hearing. Once they got started, the "lies" just rolled and story-tellers fought for a chance to talk. It was the same with the songs...The subject matter in Negro folk songs can be anything and go from love to work, to travel, to food, to weather, to fight, to demanding the return of a wig by a woman who has turned unfaithful. The tune is the unity of the thing.
My interest lies in what makes a man or a woman do such-and-so, regardless of his color. It seemed to me that humanbeings I met reacted pretty much the same to the same stimuli. Different idioms, yes. Circumstances and conditions having power to influence, yes. Inherent difference, no. But I said to myself that that was not what was expected of me, so I was afraid to tell a story the way I wanted, or rather the way the story told itself to me. So I went on that way for three years...
(May 1932) I took my nerve in hand and decided to write the story I had been carrying around in me. Back in my native village, I wrote Mules and Men. That is I edited the huge mass of material I had, arranged it in some sequence and laid it aside...
(On writing Their Eyes Were Watching God)
It was dammed up in me, and I wrote it under internal pressure in seven weeks. I wish that I could write it again. In fact, I regret all of my books. It is one of the tragedies of life that one cannot have all the wisdom one is ever to possess in the beginning. Perhaps, it is just as well to be rash and foolish for a while. If writers were too wise, perhaps no books would be written at all... You take up the pen when you are told, and write what is commanded. There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you. You have all heard of the Spartan youth with the fox under his cloak.
Hope this helps.
Carrie
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Laura
McCaffrey
Registered User
(12/18/01 9:32:22 am)
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ZNH
Darn darn and double darn. In one of my Barnard Alumnae mags was a fabulous article written by another Barnard alum about using ZNH in classrooms. Unfortunately I can't seem to find it, though I'm sure I put it aside!
The bit that I thought would pertain to this discussion was really fascinating. The Barnard alum taught both in an academic setting and to women in prison. She used Their Eyes Were Watching God with both groups and was flabergasted by the differences in interpretation. Seems that the women in prison saw many things embedded in the text - words, ways of speaking, folk references - that told a tale that wasn't explicit. When the teacher brought their ideas into the academic classroom, her students thought she was nuts. I wish I could give more concrete examples but I read it quite a while ago. Anyway - the article, for me, raised the issue of seperate folk cultures living side-by-side for so many years and still existing - that black, or African-American, folk culture still has a seperate individual vitality.
As an aside - Tell My Horse by ZNH are her observations about "voodoo and life in Haiti and Jamaica". Seems she visited Haiti and Jamaica in the '30's and participated as an initiate. Perhaps not exactly what you're looking for, but should provide in interesting perspective. Or a good read anyway. Laura Mc
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Kate
Unregistered User
(12/18/01 12:29:31 pm)
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Thanks
These are all very thought-provoking responses! Thank you. I wish I had more than 700 words for this review. I'll have to severely limit what I say. The book is interesting in that it is completely unedited--so there are all sorts of repetitions and variations--it is a world-within-a-world when you read it, really. As for mass appeal, I don't know--one might argue that Angela Carter's folktale collections are more successful in their potential appeal because there have been assiduous editorial decisions made. However htere is something totally mesmerizing about the sheer volume in the Hurston, the unedited feel. This is all shabbily off the cuff here, sorry--I just wanted to say thanks!
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