Memories and Myths of Zora Neale Hurston 1900?-1960 Often called the patron saint of black feminism

“The monstropolous beast had left his bed.”

Parents and childhood Father = carpenter and a preacher Grew up an Eatonville, FA an all-black town They were comfortable economically One of eight siblings As a child she loved to sit on the porch of the general store and eavesdrop on adults.

Wrote Seven Books Perhaps the most renowned African-American woman of letters ever.

How black folks got their color… On the general store’s porch she learned, “how black folks got their color…and heard poetic stories about how God gave men and women their separate strengths.” --Valerie Boyd, Wrapped in Rainbows, The Life of Zora Neale Hurston.

Advent of Tragedy Her mother dies in 1904. Father sends her away to school, but then stops paying her tuition once he remarries. Zora works as a maid and moves around a lot and finally ends up in Baltimore where education was free to blacks. The 26-year old pretends to be 16.

The Bohemian Years Poet Sterling Brown said, “When Zora was there, she was the party.” First black student to enroll at Barnard. Studies anthropology under Franz Boas and researches black culture for 10 years. Marries three times—but when her husbands ask her to give up her career she refuses.

Trouble Ahead Their Eyes was criticized by her black colleagues for not addressing the race problem. “I was and am thoroughly sick of the subject. My interest lies in what makes a man or a woman do such-and-so regardless of his color.”

Accused of child Molesting 10-year-old son of a former landlady accuses Zora of molesting him to conceal his homosexual relationship with a friend. Zora’s career destroyed…keeps writing but can’t find a publisher. At 59 she returns to working as a maid. At her death townspeople in Florida pay for her burial but there is not enough money for her gravestone.

Life After Death African-American author Alice Walker (The Color Purple) lays a marker on Zora’s grave and the rehabilitation of a great American author began. Perhaps the most renowned African-American woman of letters ever. Sources: New York Times Book Review, January 12, 2003. Bloom. Harold. (Ed.). (1986). Modern Critical Views Zora Neale Hurston. Chelsea: Chelsea House Publishers.

Essential Exam Questions on the novel The Novel’s Narrative Structure What advantages does the novel’s dual narrative structure provide? How does the novel’s narrative structure place demands upon the reader that are not present in a traditional third person narrative? Explore how the novel’s narrative structure traces Janie’s movement from being an object (passive) to being a subject (self-aware and powerful)? What literary techniques does Hurston use to broaden the scope of her novel so that the reader can see more than Janie’s limited perspective? At the start of the novel, the defining quality of Janie’s voice is innocence. Does she lose her innocence and enter the fallen world of experience, or does she reinvent a new order, a new kind of relationship?

Symbolism

Symbolism

Little Miss Independent? To what extent has Janie become an independent woman? What needs can she fill herself and what needs must she rely on others to fulfill? Looking at Janie’s life, What are the ramifications of an abbreviated childhood? What literary techniques does Hurston use to broaden the scope of her novel so that the reader can see more than Janie’s limited perspective?

:Reinventing Relationships “Love is lak de se. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.” Hurston Interpretation: “She bends to the men she is with, but seems to learn more about herself instead of losing her identity. She “takes shape: to their “shores” but does not run into them…” Jordy

Scholarly views of the novel: “Symbolically the burial is more than fun: Janie, like the real mule, has escaped being a Mule only through a kind of death. She has become estranged from her husband, from the community, from any redemptive sense of heritage. She has landed in No Man’s land for refusing to be a Mule.”

Tea Cake as spiritual guide “Tea Cake…finds a mode of love in which neither he nor Janie possesses the other, but in which both belong to a larger community and in their love celebrate this larger, essentially mythic union.”

Essential Question: What kind of a heroine is Jamie Janie is not an admirable heroine because by defining herself through relationships she fails to discover who she is on her own. She is too dependent on men and male admiration as sources for her sense of self. vs. Janie is an admirable heroine and her successes provide a new model of female power, self-expressiveness and fulfillment.

Sources: Barthold, Bonnie, J Sources: Barthold, Bonnie, J. Black time: Fiction of Africa, the Caribbean, and the Unitied States. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.