from Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston page 792-796 Hurston describes her first encounters with white people from outside her community, and her earliest exposures to literature. As a child, she waves to travelers who drive past her house, talking with them and hitching rides. At school, she is introduced to two visiting white women from Minnesota. Impressed by Hurston’s reading, they give her gifts—most importantly, books.

Dust Tracks is Hurston’s autobiography. - An autobiography is a written account of the life of a person written by that person.  Hurston’s writing contains slang. -Slang is an informal nonstandard vocabulary composed of language peculiar to a particular group, trade, or pursuit. Hurston used dialect (slang) to reproduce the pattern of speech she grew up with in the South. -Other writers resented her use of dialect, believing that it represented a comic stereotype of African Americans and promoted racism.

This story is full of idioms. -An idiom is a unique expression that arises in a given language or dialect. Examples: 1. “lick the calf”—wash up 2. “going a piece of the way”—going partway down the road 3. “if we cut one caper”—if we played any pranks 4. “two young ladies just popped in”—they visited the school without warning 5. “I got on my mark”—I got ready