.. . ' . F f: A in} '.’| on. 3“ ’7 ' a I? 2' 3 '5 . __ ___ Ep_{,,-._£r- H-Fu“-—u 5“";3 e §+ J4- .’ -»' _- “’1- L "-“If ’7'“ “I This is to certify that the dissertation entitled AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICAL RESPONSE TO ZORA NEAL HURSTON presented by Adele Sheron Newson has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for Ph.D. English degree in <¥Zf2¢u C1 >v5¢fiAA -:Lkavt2; Major professor Date June 9, 1986 MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 0-12771 RETURNING MATERIALS: MSU Place in book drop to LIBRANES remove this checkout from ”- your record. FINES will be charged if book is returned after the date stamped below. V“ We .DEC 5991 M . . '9 3333.9 P M— uunw ' um APR 2 9 1997. 7 177 ' " E: I a]; m ‘ «mm 7“ HUME \ $59 ' . Mug-48 inu'231999 APRZ L'a‘lu: ‘. \ 4 35W 2 8 Ifigsi I 0 5 - AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICAL RESPONSE TO ZORA NEALE HURSTON BY Adele Sheron Newson A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Q DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English 1986 ABSTRACT AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICAL RESPONSE TO ZORA NEALE HURSTON BY Adele Sheron Newson Zora Neale Hurston was the only woman writer to enjoy relative success during and after the Harlem Renaissance era. Although the period was dominated by such artists as Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, Sterling Brown, and Wallace Thurman, Hurston published nearly a dozen short stories before her first novel Jonah's Gourd Vine in 1934. Subsequently, she published two collections of folklore, three additional novels, and an autobiography. Her last novel, Seraph on the Suwanee (1948) marked both her attempt to reach a wider audience (the principal characters of the novel were white) and the last major publication during her lifetime. She wrote scores of essays, articles, and reviews as well, many of which espoused views which made her unpopular among the community of scholars and artists of the time. Hurston returned to Florida and fell into obscurity following the publication of Seraph on the Suwanee. She died in 1960 in a wedfare home in Saint Lucie County, Florida. From the essays, reviews, articles, criticisms, and books written about Hurston in the last half century, a portrait of a driven black female writer appears. This portrait has historical significance for everyone involved in American letters. The annotated bibliography that follows documents Hurston's Journey from Eatonville, Florida, to New York, through the South, to the West Indies, back to New York and into obscurity of a Florida welfare home. It also documents America‘s reactions to her findings. For Billy James Newson, Jr. and in memory of my parents iv TABLES OF CONTENTS Chapter 32193 I. INTRODUCTION............ ..................... 1 II. WRITINGS BY ZORA NEALE HURSTONH.H.H.H.H. 28 III. WRITINGS ABOUT ZORA NEALE HURSTON............ 29 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Critical attention came early to Zora Neale Hurston. Initially'she was greeted with mixed reviews, later taken more seriously as both novelist and folklorist, and finally, posthumously recognized as an important writer whose life and works provide inspiration for and influence on other black writers. ‘The arc of her critical reception bears a close relationship to corresponding changes in social, literary, and racial attitudes. During the 19303 and 1940s she enjoyed marginal attention from the.American literary establishment--both she and her subject matter were considered novelties. During the 19503 and 1960s she began to slip into obscurity—-in part due to her non-conventional political ideas and because it appeared that her works would not withstand the test of time. In the 19705 and 19803 she has been pulled closer to the center of the American literary establishment because that establishment has become more responsive to minority writers, to women, and to mixed forms and because of the active revival and re-evaluation of the Hurston canon. In 1921, Hurston began her writing career with the publication of the story, "John Redding Goes to Sea," in Stylus, the Howard University literary magazine (reprinted in Opportunity in 1926). The story of young John Redding's longing to flee his rural village--that rural village being roughly equivalent to Hurston's own Eatonville, Florida--is described by one critic as Hurstonhs struggle "to make literature out of the Eatonville experience. It was her unique subject, and she was encouraged to make it the source of her art" (Hemenway, 1977). Several short stories later, Hurston left Washington, D.C. with a storehouse of Eatonville folklore garnered during her childhood. She arrived in New York with the hope of participating fully in the Harlem Renaissance, the movement which celebrated black art of many kinds. In 1924, she emerged at the forefront of the publishing activity that included black writers. Her activity in New York during the 1920s gained her the reputation of being flamboyant, talented person. Her craft during those years was confined to the writing of the short story. There is some question about Hurston's date of birth, but it is now thought that she was 47 when in 1934 she published Jonahis Gourd Vine, her first novel. More than seven years had elapsed from the time she arrived in New York to the publication of that book. Of those intervening years critic Andrew Burris maintained, "We believed that Zora Hurston was not interested in writing a book merely to jump on the bandwagon of the New Negro Movement, as some quite evidently were; but we felt that she was taking her time, mastering her craft, and would as a result produce a really significant book" (1934). Yet Burris went on to describe Jonah's Gourd Vine as a failure as a novel because, in his words, Hurston "used her characters and the various situations created for them as mere pegs upon which to hang their dialect and their folkwast' In contrast, reviewer Nick Aaron Ford found Jonah's Gourd Vine (the story of John Pearson's rise and fall in marriage and work) a failure because of the chief character's inability to rise to the heights ofBen Hur, "bursting the unjust shackles that had bound him to a rotten social order and winning the applause even of his enemies" (1936). Leery of what less informed readers would think of John Pearson's antics, Ford concluded that "thoughtless readers of other races...[might find Pearson] a happy confirmation of what they already faintly believe: namely, that the Negro is incapable of profiting by experience or of understanding the deeper mysteries of life." Yet other critics celebrated Jonah's Gourd Vine for its faithful, if not telling, depiction of folkways, while criticizing its execution. One critic believed, "The framework of the book is less commendable than its fine, juicy and eminently natural humor, and its record of curious folkways" (Brickell, 1934). Another maintained that although Hurston "paints vivid pictures of Negro life, her style often falls flat as she brings in new events for which the reader is unprepared" (Felton, 1934). Still other critics, enamored by Hurston's candor and facility for writing dialect, characterized the novel as a great achievement. The Booklist reviewer found the novel to be about "real Negroes written without affectation" (1934L Martha Gruening observed that Hurston wrote the story of John.Pearson.with."freedom from sentimentality that is so frequently in writing about Negroes" (1934). Gruening concluded that, "candor like Miss Hurston's is sufficiently rare among Negro writers. It is only one of the excellences of this book." Margaret Wallace called Jonah's Gourd Vine "the most vital and original novel about the American negro that has yet been writtensu." (1934). Wallace praised Hurstonfs rendition of the Southern Negro dialect noting that "Its essence liesu.in the rhythm and balance of the sentences, in the warm artlessness of the phrasingfl' Many reviewers agreed that a notable feature of Jonah's Gourd Vine involved Hurston's use of dialect in the novel. One reviewer called John Pearson's sermon "simply magnificent" (Brickell, 1934). Mary White Ovington admired the fact that the material of the book was dressed in magnificent phraseology (1934), a stylistic feature that would continue to dominate Hurston's later works. In one of her early essays, "Characteristics of Negro Expression," Hurston identified one of the key characteristics of Negro style as the "will to adorn." She cited ways the American Negro has done wonders to the English language," through phrasing--introducing unusual figurative language, double-descriptive adjectives, and verbal nouns. In Hurston's second book, Mules and Men, this feature of the Southern (Florida and New Orleans) Negroes' speech is presented in depth. This collection of folklore and tales, unified by a narrator who guides the reader through her experience of collecting Southern folklore, was introduced by Dr.Franz Boas. Boas observed that the collection represented "the intimate setting in the social life of the Negro," a feature largely absent from previous folklore accounts. In the main, response to Mules and Men heralded it as a milestone on counts of both execution and content. One critic believed that Hurston encouraged "her readers to listen in while her own people were being natural, something her people could never be in the company of outsiders" (Brock, 1935). Another critic called the book "a valuable picture of the life of the unsophisticated Negro in the small towns and backwoods of Florida" (Moon, 1935). Samuel G. Stoney said the book was ”an excellent piece of reporting with an infectiously interesting style," although he warned readers not to let the first twenty pages of the book arrest them because "things are a great deal better from thenceforth" (1935). Additionally, Jonathan Daniels believed Mules and Men to be "rich enough to withstand both skepticism and familiarity" (1935). Poet and critic Sterling Brown, however, disagreed with Hurston's notion that the black story teller lacked bitterness. Brown objected to what he called her "socially unconscious characters" (1936). At the heart of Brownfls criticism is the very real problem facing Black writers of the era: how Negro artists should depict Negro characters in their works, the question of the black writer‘s social and artistic responsibilities. The notion of the facile or superstitious Negro character was altogether distasteful to both Brown and Harold Preece who, although a white liberal, believed Hurston to have engaged in a type of professional colonialism. Preece dismissed Hurston as a literary climber, explaining that "The resentment of some Negro circles toward the work of Miss Hurston is easily explainedu.. For when a Negro author describes her race with such a servile term as "Mules and Men," critical members of the race must necessarily evaluate the author as a literary climber" (1936). If Hurston's intent in Mules and Men was to provide a record of the big "lies" told by Southern black folk--the lies which explained the nature of the problems black people face aS‘well as the lies told simply to entertain, thereby presenting a case for black American mythology--then, perhaps the reviewer who came closest to recognizing Hurston's intention was B.C. McNeill. McNeill asserted that in Mules and Men, Hurston presented "something unique for a collection.of folkways, the sort of running dialogue that would, in moderate use, form the local atmosphere of modern novels dealing with characters drawn from thelnilieu [the folk tradition of Negroes in the south]" (1936). Moreover, McNeill anticipated the problems Hurston might face due to the candid depiction of characters when he cautioned, "If she has not convinced all readers of the powers of Voodooism, [she] has offered new evidence of widespread ignorance and superstition." Hurston used the local atmosphere of the characters drawn from the Mules and Men milieu for her third book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the story of Janie Crawfordks development into conscious personhood. The novel was largely misinterpreted by almost all of the novel's reviewers, for several reasons. To begin, Their Eyes Were Watching God is not a protest novel in the tradition of James Weldon Johnson's, Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, nor does it reflect the influence of the Communist party that was shaping the work of several black authors of the period. Richard Wright, in a New Masses review, objected to the minstrel images he felt Hurston was perpetuating, although he admitted that "her dialogue manages to catch the psychological movements of the Negro folk-mind in their pure simplicity” (1937). 'Wright condemned Hurston's efforts because Their Eyes Were Watching God did not concern itself with "the race or class struggle or the revolutionary traditions of black people in America." Conversely, Ethel A. Forrest found that "every phase of the life of the Negro in the South, like self- segregation.of the Negroes themselves and the race hatred displayed by the Southern white man, has been interwoven" in Their Eyes Were Watching God.(1938). Forrest concluded that the novel "in many respects, [was] a historical novelJ' Second, the idea of the questing woman character-- Janie's quest for love among equals as well as for self- discovery--was at the time of the novel's appearance, a foreign concept. This important aspect of the novel-— Janie's development--was either dismissed as frivolous or blatantly misinterpreted. One reviewer found Janie to be "anlupstanding'coffee-colored.quadroon [who]out lasts all three of her men--the last only because she was quicker on the trigger than he was--goes back to her village to rest in peace and make her friends' eyes bug out at the tales of what she and life have done together" (Time, 1937). The same critic began the review with the suggestion that "Southerners would simply disregard the equalitarian groupings implicit in the novel, while Northerners might well find in it some indigestible food for thoughtfl' Third, some black critics found unseemly that episode in which Janie's vindication rests on the decision of 12 white men. It somehow spoke, they thought, of Hurston's supposed adoration of whites. W. A. Hunton believed that Hurston's using kind white folks to save Janie from the accusations of her own people "indicates an acceptance of the principle of racial isolation" because "the Negro environment is the only environment which will enable the Negro to be himself" (1938). Hunton added that if Hurston "desires to make the best use--the honest use--of her universally acknowledged mastery of the idiom, and imagery of Negro folklore, she must (likewise) change her point of view--and her audience." Poet Sterling Brown discovered that Hurston "does not dwell upon the 'people ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor' who swarm upon the 'muck' for short-time jobs. But there is bitterness, sometimes oblique, in the enforced folk manner, and sometimes forthwright" (1937)--e.g. the mistress beats Nanny for having a grey-eyed child, and after the hurricane, whites were buried in pine coffins while the Negroes were sprinkled with quick-lime, then covered with dirt. In short, then, reviewers who responded both favorably and unfavorably to Their Eyes Were Watching God seemed to have been arrested by isolated incidents. Yet, there was more informed criticism, criticism which examined and sought to unify all the elements of the text. One reviewer pointed 10 out that Hurston was not preoccupied with the then current fetish of the primitive. IRather she created "the perfect relationship of man and woman, whether they be black or white . . . there is a sense of triumph and glory when the tale is done" (Hibben, 1937). Lucy Tompkins echoed this sentiment when she wrote that Their Eyes Were Watchinngod is a novel "about everyone, or at least every one who isn't so civilized that he has lost the capacity for glory" (1937). Early reviewers concerned with matters of style and execution agreed that "Their Eyes Were Watching God contained a number of technical flaws." One reviewer found the novel's execution "too complex and wordily pretty." Its breakdown in structure was traced to "the conflict between the true vision and its overliterary expression" (Ferguson, 1937). Another reviewer discovered that "the only weak spots in the novel are technical; it begins awkwardly with a confusing and unnecessary preview of the end" (Stevens, 1937). Tell My Horse, Hurston's fourth book, is her personal account of inquiry into the Voodoo cults of Jamaica and Haiti. The three-part book includes sections on Jamaica culture, "Politics and PerSonalities of Haiti," and "Voodoo in Haiti." Tell My Horse also contains an appendix with Negro music, Voodoo formulae, conjure paraphernalia, and prescriptions from root doctors. 11 Hurston's contemporaries, unable to unearth a pattern to the materials she presented in the book, found it "disorganized but interesting" (New Yorker, 1938), or an unusual and intensely interesting book (New York Times, 1938). Harold Courlander described the book as "a curious mixture of remembrances, travelogue, sensationalism and anthropology. The remembrances are vivid, the travelogue tedious, the sensationalism reminiscent of Seabrook and the anthropology a melange of misinterpretation and exceedingly good folklore" (1938). The New York Times reviewer observed that Hurston writes of her experiences "with sympathy and level-headed balance, with no sensationalism, in a style which is vivid, sometimes lyrical, occasionally strikingly dramatic, yet simple and unstrained" (1938). Other critics saw the book as an important contribution to the existing body of folklore on the West Indies. Historian Carter G. Woodson called Tell My Horse "an important chapter in the conflict and fusion of cultures/' adding that the book is "entertaining and at the same time one of value which scholars must take into consideration in the study of the Negro in the Western Hemisphere" (1939). Similarly, Edgar T. Thomas considered the most important aspect of the book to be Hurston's exploration of Voodoo in Haiti, although he added that Herskovits' book, Life in a Haitian Valley, appeared "more systematic in its reporting, and his results more significantly interpreted than 12 Hurston's account" (1939). Moses, Man of the Mountain, like Tell My Horse, did not receive a'great deal of critical attention at the time of its initial publication in 1939. By the late 19303, the modernist influence on American letters was firmly in place. Hurston however, remained largely untouched by the movement. Sympathetic to this fact, Shelia Hibben wrote, "Hurston writes with her head and her heart at a time when there seems to be some principle of physics set dead against the appearance of novelists who give out a cheerful warmth and at the same time write with intelligence" (1937). Ralph Ellison placed Hurston in a category of writers whose fiction was "chiefly lyrical and for the most part unaware of the direction being taken by American writing as the result of the work of such writers as Joyce, Stein, Anderson and Hemingway" (1941). Dismayed by what later critics were to call Hurstonfis affirmative literature, Ellison added that, Moses, Man of the Mountain did nothing for Negro fiction." It is an understatement, then, to say that a great deal of critical and literary confusion was detectable by the time Moses, Man of the Mountain appeared. Hurston's account of Moses fused the Moses of the Old Testament and the Moses of Negro folk legend. Presented through a mixture of black dialect, colloquial English, and biblical rhetoric, Hurston achieved a dual level of narration in the novel. On the one 13 hand, she treated the Hebrew's escape from Egypt and movement to the promised land, and on the other, she explored the problems black Americans faced with emancipation. Publications that had favorably reviewed Hurston's earlier works reviewed Moses, Man of the Mountain favorably, for the most part. One critic said that Hurston's approach to the character of Moses "is as arresting as it is fresh . . . the characters are convincing; the setting has the charm of a continually changing panorama, but the whole is less successful than the parts, and the total effect is that of unfulfilled expectation" (Untermeyer, 1939). The New Yorker reviewer called the book "the real thing, warm, humorous, poetic" (1939). Another critic maintained that the story of Moses is told with "humor and with a Negro folklore quality that is warm and human" (Booklist, 1939). The New York Times review was interesting in that it was condescending to the magic lore of "primitive peoples . . . and the African most of all" while it praised Hurston's "homespun book . . . [as] literature in every best sense of the word" (Hutchinson, 1939). In addition, this reviewer was early in noting Hurston's affinity for mixing folklore with literature and folklore with fact. He observed that "It is impossible to say to what extent Miss Hurston has woven many legends and interpretation into one and how often she is making verbatim use of given, but, presumably, only 14 orally extant, traditionfl' The favorable criticism of the book continued with evaluations which were much less exacting in describing the elements which made MoseLMan of the Mountain the success that some reviewers believed it to be. Reviewer Carl Carmer characterized Moses, Man of the Mountain as "a fine Negro novel .. . [Hurston] has made a prose tapestry that sparkles with characteristic Negro humor though it never loses dignity" (1939). Carmer added that Hurston's prose in the novel "teaches us to realize the contribution her race is making to American expression." The immediate question which comes to mind is did these critics consider Negro literature inferior to mainstream literature? The question is second only to the reaction Hurston must have had to learn that her intentions in writing the book were reduced to that of making a contribution to her racial group. Perhaps the more objective reviews of the book spoke to Hurston's intentions. Philip Slomovitz found that Hurston's "distinctive contribution is her brilliant study of the problem of emancipation," while he criticized her interpretation of the ethical contributions of Moses and her treatment of the codes of law handed down by him (1939). Dust Tracks on a Road, Hurston's 1942 autobiography, was largely dismissed as a fairytale or a goodwill novel. It was, however, the recipient of the Ainsfield Award in Racial Relations. Praise was far from universal: one 15 reviewer characterized the autobiography as "the tragedy of a gifted, sensitive mind, eaten up by an egocentrism fed on the patronizing admiration of the dominant white world" (Preece, 1943). Arna Bontemps wryly viewed Hurston's autobiography as fascinating, observing that she "deals very simply with the more serious aspects of Negro life in America--she ignores them .... [adding that] She has done right well by herself in the kind of world she found" (1942). Another reviewer described the book as not a great autobiography, though worthwhile, with "interestingly presented [material], whether fact or fancy, and there is much of both in it" (Farrison, 1943). Other reviewers favored the autobiography for a number of reasons. Ernestine Rose reported that Hurston presented a "good documentary film on the growth of a Negro intellectual" through Dust Tracks on a Road (1942). Rose added that the book was written."with little finish, but the literary crudity may have been chosen deliberately to heighten effecta" Rebecca Chalmers described Dust Tracks on a_§93g as shooting off "bright sparks of personality/' adding that Hurston's omissions could be attributed to the fact that Hurston did not want to be "caught in any pattern of thought which would cause her to conform to any school of writers/thought" (1948). By 1948, Hurston had divorced herself totally from 'the Negro problem with in”; publication of 16 Seraph on the Suwanee, the story of a white Southern woman whose life is defined by her marriage. (This book is Hurston's only work that has not recently been reprinted.) Reviews of this novel were largely favorable although sparse. One reviewer applauded Hurston for knowing "her whites as she knows her Florida Negro . . . and she characterizes them with the same acumen, but she gives them no more attention than the plot demands" (Hedden, 1948). Additionally, Hedden contended, the "incompatible strains in the novel mirror the complexity of the author .. . [who] shuttles between the sexes, the professions, and the races as if she were man and woman, scientist and creative writer, white and Negro." The Christian Science Monitor reviewer described the book as being "as earthly and wholesome as a vegetable garden" (1948). Yet, Frank G. Slaughter characterized the novel as "a textbook picture of a hysterical neurotic, right to the end on the novel" (1948). He concludes by describing Seraph on the Suwanee as "a curious mixture of excellent background drawing against which move a group of half-human puppets." Seraph on the SuWanee marked not only Hurston's departure from Negro characters as subjects of her novels, it also marked her last major publication during her lifetime. The details of her life, in spite of or maybe because of her autobiography, were to remain shrouded in 17 controversy, even up to and including the present revival of her work. This controversy, in part, accounted for Hurston's fall into obscurity. Beginning with Wallace Thurman's description of Hurston in his novel Infants of Spring--an autobiographical account of Thurman's disillusion with the Harlem writers--Hurston's behavior began to become more important than her work. Scantily masked as the character Sweetie Mae Carr, she was described by Thurman as being "more noted for her ribald wit and personal effervescence than for any actual literary work. She was a great favorite among those whites who went in for Negro prodigies. Mainly because she lived up to their conception of what a typical Negro should be" (1932L Similarily, in his autobiography The Big Sea, Langston Hughes noted that Hurston "was always getting scholarships and things from wealthy white peOple, some of whom simply paid her just to sit around and represent the Negro race for them, she did it in such a racy fashion" (1940). Although both Thurman and Hughes conceded that Hurston was shrewd in her behavior and not simply a "happy darkiefl' as she was sometimes described, critic Darwin Turner found Hurston's behavior worthy of banishment from American letters. Turner described her as a "quick-tempered woman, arrogant toward her peers, obsequious toward her supposed superiors, desperate for recognition and reassurance to assuage her feelings of inferiority . .. . It is in 18 reference to this imageuthat one must examine her novels, her folklore, and her views of the Southern scene" (1971). In addition to her unpredictable behavior of the 19203 and 19303, Hurston's views helped to indict her to obscurity. What critics now call Hurston's healthy regard for her race was largely misunderstood by her contemporaries. Civil rights activist Roy Wilkins responded to Hurston's assertion that the Jim Crow system worked by accusing her of being publicity seeker, selling out her people in order to promote her books (1943). As Bernice Johnson Reagon explained, "Hurston's occasional publications during the 19503 added greatly to the controversy revolving around her as a writer and political person. It may have been the Eatonville perspective that motivated her to write articles opposing the 1954 Supreme Court desegregation decision because she felt that black people did not need to be integrated in order to learn" (1982). With the advent of the 19603, however, in the midst of the civil rights and women's rights movements, opinion of Hurston's worth as an artist improved. Alice Walker recalled, "When I read Mules and Men I was delighted. Here was the perfect book .. . This was my first indication of the quality I feel is most characteristic of Zorafls work: racial health--a sense of black people as complete, complex, undiminished human beings, a sense that is lacking in so much black writing and literature . . . Zora"3 pride in 19 black people was so pronounced in the ersatz black twenties that it made other blacks suspicious and perhaps uncomfortable .. . J'(1977). The Hurston revival began, ironically enough, with sympathetic obituary written in 1960, the year of her death. Anthropologist Alan Lomax describes her as being "far ahead of her time" (1960). Theodore Pratt lamented the fact that Hurston "suffered literary obscurity" while pleading for the recognition that she deserved (1960). The first of Hurston's works to be recalled from obscurity was Their Eyes Were Watching God. The 1965 reprint, published by Fawcett Publications, offered only a brief comment about the author's life and called the work Hurston's "more important novel." Critics who later reevaluated Hurston's works, presumably, had in their undergraduate work this reprint available to them to whet their appetites. Following the reprint of Their Eyes Were Watching God, critics began to consider Hurston in a new light. Their critical approaches became more biographical. The notion of Hurston's being a "happy darkie" needed to be dispelled so that a serious evaluation of her works could begin. Robert Bone suggested that the fact that Hurston was raised in an all-Negro town in Florida, "an experience with 'separate—but-equal' politics . . . deeply affected her outlook on racial issues as well as her approach to the Negro novel" (1966). 20 Langston Hughes included Hurston's "Gilded Six-bits" in his anthology of short fiction, The Best Short Stories of Negro ngtggs, and explained that her stories "would make delightful motion-picture, television, or radio comedies, much more human and real than 'Amos and Andy'" (1967). Another critic maintained that Hurston was good enough in her own right to justify public acclaim (Osofskey, 1968). A new image for Hurston was forming. In 1977, Robert Hemenway answered the need for a biography of Hurston with his Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography, an account which took eight years to research and write. The biography has been heralded as being the definitive Hurston. Rita B. Dandridge asserted that Hemenway”s biography "will undoubtedly become the standard reference for information about Hurstonks life and works" (1982). Equipped with a forward by Alice Walker entitled "Zora Neale Hurston: A Cautionary Tale and a Partisan View," the case for Hurston's resurrection gained national attention. The posthumous publication of I Love Myself When I Am Laughing and Then Again When I am Looking Mean and Impressive (1979), edited by Alice Walker, marked a second stage of interest in Hurston. Published by the Feminist Press, this collection of Hurston's writings attracted the attention of feminist critics and contemporary black female writers. The Village Voice reviewer observed that "it is hard to see 21 on what Hurstonfis«claim to enduring attention may rest-- until one arrives at the excerpt from her 1937 novel Egg; Eyes Were Watching God. Those who love Hurston claim that with this book she achieved literature. It is, they say, her masterpiece, the work on which all else depends for affectionate interest. On the basis of the fifty pages her reprinted, I, for one, am willing to acknowledge that claim" (Gornick, 1979). In 1978, another reprint of Their Eyes Were Watching Egg quickly followed the Hurston reader. This reprint contained a foreward by novelist Sherley Anne Williams who observed that "something of the questing quality that characterized Zorefls own life informs the character of Janie .. . in their desire and eventual insistence that their men accord them treatment due equals, they are one" (1978). By 1978 critics agreed.thatztheicharacter'Janie Stark was the prototypical questing female character. One critic described her as "the exception to the usual female character who lacks depth .. . a woman of spirit moving steadily toward self-definition" (Berzon, 1978). Another celebrated her ability to "make dreams truth" (Brown, 1978). Ellen Cantrow found Janie's awakening preferable to that of Edna Pontellier's in The Awakening (Cantrow, 1978). Still another heralded Their Eyes Were Watching God as "an unusual work in black literature because it deals more with sexism 22 than racism" (Walker, 1974). Also in 1978 Mules and Men was reprinted with an introduction by Robert Hemenway. Hemenway announced that the book "remains today as it was at the time of its publication, one of the most important collections of Afro— American folklore ever published" (Hemenway, 1978). In an article published the same year, Hemenway suggested a folkloric approach to the analysis of Hurston's materials. According to Hemenway, Hurston "adapts and transforms folklore for fictional purposes to a much greater extent than any other Afro-American writer" (1978). In a later article Hemenway advanced the notion that folktales have much to offer the present canon of literature, "just as Zora Neale Hurston has much to offer us as we step into the classroom of the future" (1982). Another biography of Hurston, written by Lillie P. Howard, appeared in 1980. The book grew out of Howardfs 1975 dissertation ("Zora Neale Hurston: A Non-Revolutionary Black Artist") at the University of New Mexico. By 1975, the number of papers on Hurston and dissertations treating Hurston alone or coupled with other female writers began to increase dramatically. The dissertations included such titles as "A Critical Investigation of Literary and Linguistic Structures in the Fiction of Zora Neale Hurston," "To Make a Woman Black: A Critical Analysis of the Women Characters in the Fiction and Folklore of Zora Neale 23 Hurston," and "The Ironic Vision of Four Black Women Novelists: A Study of the Novels of Jessie Fauset, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ann Petryu" The 19703, then, saw the beginning of a large scale resurrection of Hurstonfs works and the accompanying reevaluation of her worth as both artist and intellect. The 19803 began with a burst of reprints of Hurston's works. In 1981, The Sanctified Church, a collection of Hurston's spiritual and voodoo accounts, was published with an introduction by Toni Cade Bambara. Bambara expressed the hope that "these essays will whet the readerks appetite and maybe even encourage some to pursue the task of collecting more of Zora and make it available in print" (1981). Tell My Horse was also reprinted in 1981 with an introduction by Bob Callahan who maintained that "The importance of Hurston's works, it now appears, will outlast us all" (1981). Dust Tracks on a Road and Moses, Man of the Mountain were reprinted in 1985 and considered by the 52! York Tings Book RevieW critic as "important to reassessing Hurstonfs standing" iJ1.American literature (Gates, 1985). Spunk: The Selected Short Stories of Zora Neale Hurston also appeared in 1985, with a foreward by Bob Callahan. The Christian Science Monitor reviewer called Spppk "the result of a writer discovering her subjects and learning to master her language" (Cornish, 1985). 24 In addition to the reprints of her books, there appeared a number of articles and essays which elevated Hurston herself to the status of literary mentor. Beginning in the late 19703 and extending into the 19803, Hurston appeared a living spiritual entity for writers and critics alike. Mules and Men, for example, seems to have provided Alice Walker with the substance of her character Shug in her award-winning novel The Color Purple. Shug appears to be a composite of Big Sweet, Shug, and Ella Walla (all female characters in Mules and MenL. All are nontraditional female characters: they carry knives, curse, participate in lying sessions, challenge men for the sport of it, and revel in their promiscuity. The following passage during which Big Sweet attempts to console Zora is reminiscent of the important dialogue between Shug and Celie during which God is demystified: God loves uh plain sinner and he's married tuh de backslider. Ah got jus' as good uh chance at Heben as anybody else. So have yo' correct amount uh fun (ZNH, 1935). There are other minor characters in The Color Purple who seem to be reminiscent of characters from Mules and Men. This revelation is not meant to detract from Alice Walkerks accomplishment, but, rather, to show the important connection between the present black female writer‘s subject matter and that of her foremother. The present love affair with Hurston has yielded interestingly original dialogues. Author Alice Walker 25 observed that what she discovered in Hurston was "A model, 'who, as it happened, provided more than voodoo for my story, more than one of the greatest novels America had produced .. . She had provided, as if she knew someday I would come along wandering in the wilderness, a nearly complete record of her life .. . I am eternally grateful for that life, warts and all" (1976). Feminist critic Ellen Cantarow said that Hurston "gives me not just vicarious strength, but also understanding" [of the historical bond between white and black women in this country] (1978), while Carole Gregory constructed an imaginary interview during which Hurston answers criticism. Gregory, in her preface to the interview, explained that "Hurstomfs ability to express our deepest feelings through the particular experience of Black women.and men has made her writings a treasure" (1980). In addition to inspiration and understanding, scholars have turned to Hurston's canon for confirmation of a black female literary traditions Barbara Smith.explained that the way Hurston and other black female writers incorporated the traditional black female activities "into the fabric of their stories is not mere coincidence, nor is their use of socifically Black female language to express their own and their characters' thoughts accidental. The use of Black women's language and cultural experience in books by Black women about Black women results in a miraculously rich 26 coalescing of form and content . . ." (1982). Lorraine Bethel echoed Smith's assertion in her essay, "'This Infinity of Conscious Pain': Zora Neale Hurston and the Black Female Literary Tradition," by asserting that Hurston's works form a major part of the "separable and identifiable tradition of Black women writers, simultaneously existing within and independent of the American, Afro-American, and American female tradition . . . and illustrates its unique simultaneity" (1982). Other scholars have turned their attention to mainstream critical approaches to Hurston's works. Barbara Johnson provided a structuralist analysis of Their Eyes Were Watching God by exploring Hurston's acumen with figurative language, the opposition between an inside and an outside way of describing the nature of a rhetorical figure (1984). Cyrena N. Pondrom suggested that Hurston's "adoption of myth as a principle of meaning and order is Hurston's most important link to modernism . . . She shares with Eliot, Yeats, Joyce, Pound, and Crane the use of myth as 'a way of controlling or ordering, or giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history'" (1986). On the whole, Hurston's resurrection might best be described as arising from the need to fill a void in American literature, black folklore, the American literary traditions, and the climate of the 19603 which fostered such 27 a revival. That it has lasted as long as it has speaks to the quality of Hurston's amazing work. One cannot help but be intrigued by Alice Walker's assessment of Hurston's life. Walker explained "What is amazing is that Zora, who became an orphan at nine, a runaway at fourteen, a maid and manicurist:(because of necessity and not from love of the work) before she was twenty, with one dress, managed to become Zora Neale Hurston, author and anthropologist, at all" (1977). What is even more amazing is that Hurston was more than likely in her late teens when her mother died, in her late twenties when she entered college, and in her late forties when she published her first novel. A resident of the welfare home of Saint Lucie County, Florida, Hurston died penniless in 1960. My survey of the essays, reviews, articles, criticisms, and books written about Hurston in the last half-century, reveals a portrait of a driven black female writer. This portrait has historical importance for everyone involved with American letters. The annotated bibliography that follows documents Hurston's journey from Eatonville, Florida, to New York, through the South, to the West Indies, back to New Ybrk, and into the obscurity of a Florida welfare home. It also documents America's reactions to her findings. 1934 1935 1937 1938 1939 1942 1948 1979 1981 1984 28 Writings by Zora Neale Hurston Jonah's Gourd Vine. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott; London: Duckworth Press. Mules and Men. Philadelphia: J38. Lippencott. London: Kegan Paul & Co., 1936. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1978. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Philadelphia: LLB. Lippincott; London: J.M. Dent & Sons. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1965. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1978. Tell My Horse. Philadelphia: JxB. Lippincott. London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1939; new edition as Voodoo Gods: an Inquiry into Native Myths and Magic in Jamaica and Haiti. Berkeley, CA: Turtle Island Foundation, 1981. Moses, Man of the Mountain. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott. London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1941; reprinted as The Man of the Mountain. Chicago: University of Illinois PRess, 1984. stt Tracks on a Road. Philadelphia: JyB. Lippincott. London: Hutchinson & Co., 1944. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984. Segaph on the_§pgange. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. I Love Myself When I Am Laughing and Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive. Edited by Alice Walker. Old Westbury, New York: The Feminist Press. The Sanctified Church. Berkeley, CA: Turtle Island Foundation. Spunk: The Selected Short Stories of Zora Neale Hurston. Berkeley, CA: Turtle Island Foundation. 1 1 29 1931 CROMWELL, OTELIA; LORENZO DOW TURNER; and EVA B. DYKES. Readings from Negro Authors. NY: Harcourt, Brace and Company, p. 58. Lists Hurston among the best-known Negro writers of the short story in America. Includes the short story "Drenched in Light" as a selection. Cites the short story "Judgment" by Hurston for collateral reading. [Although "Judgment" is mentioned in this text, no record of its existence has been found.] 1934 BRICKELL, HERSCHEL. North American Review 238, no. 1 (July): 95-96. Reviews Jonah's Gourd Vine. Calls it "A remarkably good Negro novel." Adds that "The framework of the book is less commendable than its fine, juicy and eminently natural humor, and its record of curious folkways." Concludes that, with the exception of Langston Hughes' Not Without Laughter, the book is easily the best piece of fiction from a member 1934 2 3 30 of her race. BURRIS, ANDREW. Qgisis 41, no. 6 (June): 166- 167. Reviews Jonah's Gourd Vine. Says that it is disappointing and a failure as a novel. Believes that Hurston "used her characters and the various situations created for them as mere pegs upon which to hang their dialect and their folkways." Adds that in the character John Buddy Pearson, Hurston had "the possibility of developing a character that might have stamped himself upon American life more idelibly than either John Henry or Black Ulyssesfl' Concedes that Hurston has amassed in the book, a rich store of folklore. FELTON, ESTELL. Opportunity 612, no. 8 (Aug.): 252-253. R9V19WS QQEEEL§_§QE£Q_YEEE- Says Hurston's "Detailed understanding of the customs and traditions of her people is an invaluable aid in winning for this book the praise some critics have given.itfl Maintains that although Hurston paints vivid pictures of Negro life, her style often falls flat as she 1934 4 5 31 brings in.new events for which the reader is unprepared, Believes that Hurston Wrises to great heights when she writes in poetic form the last sermon of John Pearson with such power and emotion that one can almost hear the sermon." Adds that plot construction and characterization are disappointing. GRUENING, MARTHA. "Darktown Strutter." New Republic 79, no. 11 (July): 244-245. Reviews Jonah's Gourd Vine. Asserts that because Hurston hails from an all-black town, she handles the story of John Pearson with zest and naturalness, and "freedom from sentimentality that is so frequently in writing about Negroes." Concludes that "Candor like Miss Hurstonfs is sufficiently rare among Negro writers. It is only one of the excellences of this book." OVINGTON, MARY WHITE. New York Ag_e_ 48, no. 35 (6 May): 6. Reviews Jonah's Gourd Vine. Says the material of the novel is dressed in magnificent phraselogy. Believes that a happy ending for John Pearson would be sacrilege, 1934 6 32 "just as an unhappy one would have been in the past.".Adds that John Pearsonfs death gives the reader a chance to read of a grand funeral. PINCKNEY, JOSEPHINE. "A Pungent, Poetic Novel About NegroesF" New York Herald Tribune Books 10, no. 35 (6 May): 7. Reviews Jonah's Gourd Vine. Asserts that Hurston "writes as a Negro whose intelligence is firmly in the saddle, who recognizes the value of an objective style in writing, and who is able to use the wealth of material available to her with detachment and with a full grasp of its dramatic qualities." Contends that Hurston writes of blacks with honesty, sympathy, and without extenuation. Notes that whites in the novel are portrayed "but little and without bitterness." Adds that Hurston reveals some uncertainty in the handling of the narrative—-"Quarrels, trial proceedings, conflicts occur which are never resolved." .Applauds Hurstonfs treatment of the character John Pearson, although adds that the character Lucy Pearson "is not equally 33 1934 convincing." 7 *R.EJLJ} Boston Chronicle 5 May. [Found in Hemenway's Zora Neale HurstonL A Literagy Biography (1977), p. 194 and 216.] Reviews Jonah's Gourd Vine. Says the novel "presents openly the greatest problem of the Negro in all its universality: the utterly inescapable interrelation of sex, success, and society." 8 Review of Jonah's Gourd Vine. Booklist 30, no. 11 (July): 351. Says Jonah's Gourd Vine is about real Negroes written without affectation by a young Negro college woman. 9 Review of Jonah's Gourd Vine. Wgtign 138 (13 June): 638. Notes faults in the construction of the novel; finds much, however, to praise. 10 Review of Jonah's Gourd Vine. Times Literary Supplement 1, no. 707 (18 Oct.): 716-717. Calls Jonah's Gourd Vine a lively and well—written story. Says the married life of Lucy Ann Potts and John Buddy Pearson is 1934 ll 34 described with a delicacy not often encountered in Negro fiction. Concludes that "the tone of the novel is grave and gay by turns and all through is free from the violence of many novels of Negro life." WALLACE, MARGARET. "Real Negro PeOple." New York Times Book Review 83, no. 27, 681 (6 May): 6-7. Reviews Jonah's Gourd Vine. Calls it "the most vital and original novel about the American Negro that has yet been written.n." Praises Hurston"s rendition of the southern Negro dialect noting that "Its essence liesu.in the rhythm and balance of the sentences, in the warm artlessness of the phrasingfl' Believes Hurston created, in the characters of John Pearson and Lucy Potts, "characters who are intensely real and human and whose outlines will remain in the readerks memory long after the book has been laid aside....They appeal to us first of all as human beings, confronting a complex of human problems with whatever grace and humor, intelligence and steadfastness they can 35 1934 muster." Describes the story as "an extraordinarily absorbing and credible tale." 1935 1 BOAS, FRANZ. Preface to Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, x. Celebrates Hurstonls achievement in entering the "intimate setting in the social life of the Negro....to penetrate through that affected demeanor by which the Negro excludes the white observer effectively from participating in his true inner life." Calls Mules and Men "an unusual contribution to our knowledge of the true inner life of the Negro," by virtue of Hurston's loveable personality and revealing style. 2 BROCK, HJL. "The Full, True Flavor of Life in a Negro Community." New York Times Book Review 85, no. 28, 414 (10 Nov.): 4. Reviews Mules and Men. Says the book "is packed with tall tales rich with flavor and alive with characteristic turns of speechfl' Notes that "a very tricky dialect has been rendered with rare simplicity_and fidelity 36 1935 into symbols so little adequate to convey its true values that the achievement is remarkable." 3 DANIELS, JONATHAN. "Black Magic and Dark Laughterfl' Saturday Review of Literature 22, no. 25 (19 Oct.): Reviews Mules and Men. Says "Only an ability to write, a rare conjunction of the sense of the ridiculous and the sense of the dramatic, could have produced this remarkable collection of Negro folktales and folk customs." Believes the book to be rich enough to withstand both skepticism and familiarity. Concludes that it is "an altogether satisfying book." 4 MOON, HENRY LEE. "Big Old Lies." New Republic 85, no. 1097 (11 Dec.): 142. Reviews Mules and Men. Says Hurston did more than collect and record tales from Florida, "Alert and keenly observant, she studied the mores, folkways and superstitions, the social and economic life of these people as an essential background for her book." Calls Mules and Men "a valuable picture of the 37 1935 life of the unsophiticated Negro in the small towns and backwoods of Florida." 5 STONEY, SAMUEL GAILLARD. "Wit, Wisdom and FolkloreJ' New York Herald Tribune Books 12, no. 6 (13 Oct.): 7. Reviews Wplg§_§ng_ng. Describes Hurstonis efforts as "an excellent piece of reporting with an infectiously interesting style." Warns readers not to let the first twenty pages.of the book arrest them because "things are a great deal better from thenceforth." Believes the book is a milestone of Negro literature "for the author has taken her people as neither better nor worse than any other race; but different as of their own right." 1936 ]. *BROWN,STERLING. Unidentified clipping. (25 Feb.) [Found in Hemenway's Zora Neale Hurston, A Literary Biography (1977), p. 219]. Reviews Mules and Men. Praises Hurston's rendering of the tales. Disputes Hurston's implicit claim that the Negro story teller 1936 2 38 lacks bitterness, adding that in his searches he often found expressions of anger and animosity. Objects to Hurston's socially unconscious characters. Concludes that Wu_le_s and Men should be more bitter. FORD, NICK AARON. The Contemporary Negro Novel. Boston: Meador, pp. 99-100. Reviews Jonah's Gourd Vine. Believes Hurston failed "from lack of vision.n.[The hero, John Buddy] could have been another Ben Hur, bursting the unjust shackles that had bound him to a rotten social order and winning the applause even of his enemiesJ' Finds John Buddy Pearsonfs inability to understand the mysteries which surround him "a phenomenon, although not intended by Miss Hurston as a type of all Negro manhood, is seized.upon.by thoughtless readers of other races as a happy confirmation of what they already faintly believe: namely that the Negro is incapable of profiting by experience or of understanding the deeper mysteries of life." 1936 3 4 39 MCNEILL, B. C. Journal of Negro History 21, No. 2 (April): 223-225. Reviews Mules and Men. Believes that Hurston presents, in Mules and Men, "something unique for a collection of folkways, the sort of running dialogue that would, in moderate use, form the local atmosphere of modern novels dealing with characters drawn from this milieu [the folk tradition.of Negroes in the south]. Maintains that Hurston, "if she has not convinced all readers of the powers of Voodooism, has offered new evidence of widespread ignorance and superstition." PREECE, HAROLD. "The Negro Folk Cult." lgrisis 43, no. 12 (Dec.): 364, 367. Says Hurston "was devoting her literary abilities to recording the legendary amours of terrapins." Suggests that "The resentment of some Negro circles toward the work of Miss Hurston is easily explained....For when a Negro author describes her race with such a servile term as 'Mules and Men,' critical members of the race must necessarily evaluate the author as a literary climber." 1937 1 2 40 1937 BRAWLEY, BENJAMIN. The Negro Genius. NY: Dodd, Mead & Co., Inc., pp. 257-259. Reviews Jonah's Gourd Vine. Says "The story is not well integrated, and any merit the book possesses is largely in such a detached episode as Pearson's sermon on creation." Believes that Hurston "struck her true vein with Mules and Men." Adds that Hurston "has not escaped criticism at the hands of those who frowned upon her broad humor and the lowly nature of her material." Asserts that her interest, however, "is not in solving problems, the chief concern being with individuals." BROWN, STERLING.A. "Luck.is a Fortunefl' Wetion 145, no. 16 (16 Oct.): 409-410. Reviews Their Eye§_Were Watching God. Says "Many incidents are unusual, and there are some narrative gaps in need of building up." Believes that Hurston's forte is the recording and creation of folk speech. Thinks the book "is chock-full of earthy and touching 1937 3 41 poetry." Maintains that Hurston "does not dwell upon the 'people ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor' who swarm upon the 'muck' for short-time jobs. But there is bitterness, sometimes oblique, in the enforced folk manner, and sometimes forthright...." FERGUSON, OTIS. "You Can‘t Hear Their Voices." New Republic 92, no. 1193 (13 Oct.): 276. Reviews Their Eyes Were Watching God. Says the novel deserves to be better. Believes that "Its execution is too complex and wordily prettyy yet its conception, that of the life of simple Florida Negroes, is unaffected and‘beautifulfl' Asserts that the breakdown comes "in the conflict between the true vision and its overliterary expression. Crises of feeling are rushed over too quickly for them to catch.hold.u.action.is described and characters are talked about, and everything is more heard than seen." Criticizes Hurston's work with dialect, calling it sloppy and characterized by "the delicate tampering with an occasional main word." 42 1937 4 HIBBEN, SHEILA. "Vibrant Book Full of Nature and SaltJ' New York Herald Tribune Books 14, no. 4 (26 Sept.): 2. Believes that Hurston was not preoccupied with the then current fetish of the primitive. Asserts that Hurston created "the perfect relationship of man and woman, whether they be black or white" in the liason of Tea Cake and Janie. Concludes that the book contains life, and "in spite of Tea Cake's tragic end and the crumbling of Janie's happiness, there is a sense of triumph and glory when the tale is done." 5 Review of Their Eyes Were Watching God. Booklist 34, no. 4 (15 Oct.): 71. Says "The life of a Negro village and of workers in the Everglades are a natural part of the warm, human story." Adds that the Negro speech is easy to read. 6 Review of Their Eyes Were Watching God. Time 30, no. 12 (20 Sept.): 71. Says Southerners would simply disregard the "equalitarian groupings implicit in the 1937 7 43 novel, while Northerners might well find in it some indigestible food for thought." Provides the following synopsis: "an upstanding coffee-colored quadroon out lasts all three of her men--the last only because she was quicker on the trigger than he was--goes back to her village to rest in peace and to make her friends' eyes bug out at the tales of what she and life have done together." STEVENS, GEORGE. \ "Negroes by Themselves." Saturday Review of Literature 26,!KL 21(18 Sept.): 3. Reviews Their Eyes Were Watching God. Says "the only weak spots in the novel are technical; it begins awkwardly with a confusing and unnecessary preview of the end; and the dramatic action, as in the story of the hurricane, is sometimes hurriedly and clumsily handled. Otherwise the narration is exactly right, because most of it is in dialogue, and the dialogue gives us a constant sense of character in action." Believes that Hurston reports the speech of Negroes with an accurate ear for its raciness. Concludes by 44 1937 calling the story "simple and unpretentious." 8 TOMPKINS, LUCY. "In the Florida Glades." EEK York Times Book Review 87, no. 29, 1000 (26 Sept.): 29. Reviews Their Eyes Were Watching God. Says the novel is "about every one, or at least every one who isnflt so civilized that he has lost the capacity for glory." Calls the section of the novel in which Janie Stark lives down on the muck of the Florida Glades "a little epic all byzitselffl' Describes the novel as "a well-nigh perfect story--a little sententious at the start, but the rest is simple and beautiful and shining with humorfl' Adds that "the dialect here is very easy to follow, and the images it carries are irresistible." 9 WRIGHT, RICHARD. "Between Laughter and Tears." New Masses (5 Oct.): 22, 25. Reviews Their Eyes Were watching God. Disagrees with the minstrel image he felt Hurston was perpetuating in the novel. Says the novel is not concerned with the race or class struggle or the revolutionary traditions 1937 1 45 of black people in America. Admits that "her dialogue manages to catch the psychological movements of the Negro folk-mind in their pure simplicity." 1938 COURLANDER, HAROLD. "Witchcraft in the Caribbean Islands." Saturday Review of Literature 18, no. 25 (15 Oct.): 6-7. Reviews Tell Wy Horse. Says Hurston exposes voodoo after the fashions of Seabrook, "in sensational, wishful terms," and Dr. Herskovits'"in its coldest mathematical terms." Believes that "To an extent she is successful.”" [because] "Miss Hurston has an immense ability for catching the idiom of dialogue, of seeing the funniness of exaggeration, of recognizing the essence of a story. And yet, though these qualities do carry through at all times, there is a constant conflict between anthropological truth and tale-telling, between the obligation she feels to give the facts honestly and the attraction of (as one of her characters says in Mules and Men) the 'big old lies we tell 46 1938 when wekre jus' sittin' around here on the store porch doin' nothink'" Concludes by suggesting "That Miss Hurston loves Haiti is obivous, but there is a