Zora neale Hurston: Critical Perspectives Past And Present

Zora Neale Hurston is a literary legend. One of the leading forces of the Harlem Renaissance, Hurston was also one of the most widely acclaimed Black authors in America from the mid twenties to the mid forties. She faded into obscurity in the subsequent decades, but literary figures and scholars in the 1970s revived her work and introduced a whole generation to her brilliance. Today she is the most widely taught Black woman writer in the canon of American literature. Born in the all-Black town of Eatonville, Florida, of which her father was mayor, Hurston was intensely proud. She became the first Black student at Barnard College, where she earned a bachelor's degree in anthropology. She conducted significant research, interviews, and fieldwork relating to Black cultures of the United States and the Caribbean. In her writings, instead of bemoaning the frustrations of the Black experience, Hurston chose to celebrate the many cultures of her people as well as the richness of their verbal expressions. Although Hurston died poor and forgotten in 1960, the visibility of the feminist movement and the interest of women writers such as Alice Walker - who was responsible for providing a headstone for Hurston's unmarked grave in 1974 - were instrumental in reestablishing Hurston's place in African-American literature. Hurston's life and work are revealed through the reviews and essays contained in Zora Neale Hurston: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and K. A. Appiah have chosen reviews of her works from such important publications of her days as The Crisis, New Masses, New Republic, the New York Herald Tribune, The New York Times Book Review, Opportunity, andSaturday Review of Literature. Hurston's first novel, Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), earned comments ranging from most vital to a disappointment, although the reviewers consistently praised her use of dialect and language. This unique collection includes reviews of Mules and Men (1935), the f