Jacquie's Email
Zora Neale HurstonThere are years that ask questions and years that answer.
As this year continues to raise so many questions, we are so fortunate to be able to come together again this Wednesday, May 16th at 12:45 pm on Zoom to hear Sharon's inaugural presentation on Zora Neale Hurston.
In addition, attached please find a draft of Joanna's inaugural topics ballot for your review. We ask that you come with any suggestions or changes you might wish to see before Joanna sends it out for an official first round of voting.
Until then! Jacquie
Christine's Minutes
The writer’s life did not end well. She struggled financially, had serious health issues, and died in a welfare home in St Lucie, Florida in 1960.
But Walker’s discovery and resuscitation has wrought great changes. Eatonville now hosts a Hurston Festival every year, and there is a Zora Neal Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts.
Sharon shared with us her experience of hearing the latest biographer, Valerie Boyd, speak, on January 7, which is Hurston’s birthday. She then emailed with the writer, until her untimely death at 58.
Zora Neal Hurston remains with us. Her play written with Langston Hugues, Mule Bone, was finally produced on Broadway in 1991. Her words keep resonating, as her quote: “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
Members read from Hurston’s autobiography, Dust Tracks, from Jonah’s Gourd Vine, from Their Eyes Were Watching God, and from Valerie Boyd’s Wrapped in Rainbows.
Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner, Recording Secretary
On March 16, 2022 sixteen members of the Literature Club gathered, yes, once again, on Zoom. From a quick check-in on the state of our membership, per our Zoom tradition, we learned that the woodcocks are emerging, that cappuccino is to be had in Williamstown, that some people are actually back to working IRL and wearing heels, that Carla has changed her topic to Margaret Wise Brown, and that we are all very concerned about Ukraine.
At 1:07 President Connie Stewart expertly rang the bell for her inaugural meeting.
The minutes for the last meeting were read, and accepted.
The treasury is still at $265.11, but there are hopes for huge gains in the coming weeks, as our dues are collected. Your $15 may be sent via check, Venmo, or Zelle to Lori, our treasurer.
There was a brief discussion of the list of possible topics, as circulated by Joanna. Literature of Adolescence was deleted, and Literature of Canada was added.
Then, onward to our armchair travels to Florida, to Harlem, to Haiti, and back to Florida, all in an afternoon. Sharon, in her inaugural presentation for Literature Club, knocked it out of the park. Her subject, Zora Neale Hurston, was a novelist, playwright, anthropologist, folklorist, and a leader in the Harlem Renaissance.
She was born in 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama, during hog-killing season. She was fifth of the eight children of John and Lucy Hurston. Zora, however, was not pleased with that birth year, and subtracted from it so many times that she ended up being born in 1901.
When she was three, the family moved to Eatonville, Florida. Eatonville was one of the few all-Black incorporated towns in the country. Valerie Boyd, her biographer, wrote that her confidence derived from growing up in Eatonville, where she learned to experience “racial health”. Growing up without the “white gaze” she did not know she was ‘colored’ until she went away to school.
When Zora was 13, her mother died, and many things in her life were altered for the worse. She was sent off to boarding school where she did not fit in. When she returned home, she discovered that her father had remarried, to the archetypal evil step-mother. The father, John Hurston, was a complicated man. He was a pastor of the Macedonian Missionary Baptist Church; he was also a philanderer, and sometimes violent. Several of Hurston’s protagonists are based on her father, including the pastor in Jonah’s Gourd Vine. After returning from boarding school, Hurston worked at many jobs, from a ladies’ maid in a theatre troupe to a waitress, ending up in Maryland.
But all she cared about was getting her high school degree, and to that end, she shaved more years off her age in order qualify for free schooling in Baltimore. She excelled in high school and was admitted to Howard University. Her writing began to get serious attention. In 1924, her short story, “Drenched in Light,” was accepted for publication, and the next year she moved north to Harlem. Like Eatonville, Harlem was all black, and she became part of the Harlem Renaissance. At a 1925 Awards Dinner for winners of the Opportunity Literary Contest, Hurston won several prizes, for two short stories and for a play called Spears. Langston Hugues was there, and decided he wanted to know her – they soon became close friends.
With her prize money, Hurston enrolled at Barnard. Thus began her lifelong need to accept financial aid from white people. This aid allowed her to continue with her writing, but it also led to complicated and uncomfortable situations. At Columbia, Hurston met Franz Boas, the renowned anthropologist. Anthropology was a perfect fit for Hurston, who never stopped loving and retelling the stories heard on her porch in Eatonville. In 1927 she received a fellowship to collect “Negro folklore” in the South, and collect she did, from Florida to Haiti and New Orleans. She discovered the use of ‘double words’ in Negro vernacular, and became a pre-eminent scholar of Hoodoo.
Hurston’s anthropological work found its way into her novels, as did the language of her characters. Her use of this vernacular was often criticized, as it made Blacks appear uneducated. She was also criticized for not focusing on the plight of Blacks. But she was also defended by certain Black critics.
Meanwhile, money was needed to live. Charlotte van der veer Quick Mason supported many Black artists in addition to Hurston. She only asked that she be called “Godmother” and that her identity be kept secret.
Hurston’s 1928 essay, ‟How it Feels to be Colored Me,” published in a white journal, set out her views on race. In 1930 she began working on a play, Mule Bone, with Langston Hugues, based on a short story of Hurston’s. But things between the two grew complicated, and in the end, the process destroyed their friendship.
Hurston’s three marriages were all brief. Her longest relationship was with Percy Punter, a graduate student at Columbia, who later became the inspiration for Teacake in Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Hurston’s best-known work, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was written over seven weeks in Haiti, and was published in 1937 to very little notice. Even though it contains a rare incidence of what is known to beekeepers as “Apian-porn.” Then in 1973, Alice Walker ‘discovered’ Hurston and her work. Since then, millions of copies have been sold all over the world, it is taught in schools everywhere, and even a Halle Berry movie has been made.
At 1:07 President Connie Stewart expertly rang the bell for her inaugural meeting.
The minutes for the last meeting were read, and accepted.
The treasury is still at $265.11, but there are hopes for huge gains in the coming weeks, as our dues are collected. Your $15 may be sent via check, Venmo, or Zelle to Lori, our treasurer.
There was a brief discussion of the list of possible topics, as circulated by Joanna. Literature of Adolescence was deleted, and Literature of Canada was added.
Then, onward to our armchair travels to Florida, to Harlem, to Haiti, and back to Florida, all in an afternoon. Sharon, in her inaugural presentation for Literature Club, knocked it out of the park. Her subject, Zora Neale Hurston, was a novelist, playwright, anthropologist, folklorist, and a leader in the Harlem Renaissance.
She was born in 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama, during hog-killing season. She was fifth of the eight children of John and Lucy Hurston. Zora, however, was not pleased with that birth year, and subtracted from it so many times that she ended up being born in 1901.
When she was three, the family moved to Eatonville, Florida. Eatonville was one of the few all-Black incorporated towns in the country. Valerie Boyd, her biographer, wrote that her confidence derived from growing up in Eatonville, where she learned to experience “racial health”. Growing up without the “white gaze” she did not know she was ‘colored’ until she went away to school.
When Zora was 13, her mother died, and many things in her life were altered for the worse. She was sent off to boarding school where she did not fit in. When she returned home, she discovered that her father had remarried, to the archetypal evil step-mother. The father, John Hurston, was a complicated man. He was a pastor of the Macedonian Missionary Baptist Church; he was also a philanderer, and sometimes violent. Several of Hurston’s protagonists are based on her father, including the pastor in Jonah’s Gourd Vine. After returning from boarding school, Hurston worked at many jobs, from a ladies’ maid in a theatre troupe to a waitress, ending up in Maryland.
But all she cared about was getting her high school degree, and to that end, she shaved more years off her age in order qualify for free schooling in Baltimore. She excelled in high school and was admitted to Howard University. Her writing began to get serious attention. In 1924, her short story, “Drenched in Light,” was accepted for publication, and the next year she moved north to Harlem. Like Eatonville, Harlem was all black, and she became part of the Harlem Renaissance. At a 1925 Awards Dinner for winners of the Opportunity Literary Contest, Hurston won several prizes, for two short stories and for a play called Spears. Langston Hugues was there, and decided he wanted to know her – they soon became close friends.
With her prize money, Hurston enrolled at Barnard. Thus began her lifelong need to accept financial aid from white people. This aid allowed her to continue with her writing, but it also led to complicated and uncomfortable situations. At Columbia, Hurston met Franz Boas, the renowned anthropologist. Anthropology was a perfect fit for Hurston, who never stopped loving and retelling the stories heard on her porch in Eatonville. In 1927 she received a fellowship to collect “Negro folklore” in the South, and collect she did, from Florida to Haiti and New Orleans. She discovered the use of ‘double words’ in Negro vernacular, and became a pre-eminent scholar of Hoodoo.
Hurston’s anthropological work found its way into her novels, as did the language of her characters. Her use of this vernacular was often criticized, as it made Blacks appear uneducated. She was also criticized for not focusing on the plight of Blacks. But she was also defended by certain Black critics.
Meanwhile, money was needed to live. Charlotte van der veer Quick Mason supported many Black artists in addition to Hurston. She only asked that she be called “Godmother” and that her identity be kept secret.
Hurston’s 1928 essay, ‟How it Feels to be Colored Me,” published in a white journal, set out her views on race. In 1930 she began working on a play, Mule Bone, with Langston Hugues, based on a short story of Hurston’s. But things between the two grew complicated, and in the end, the process destroyed their friendship.
Hurston’s three marriages were all brief. Her longest relationship was with Percy Punter, a graduate student at Columbia, who later became the inspiration for Teacake in Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Hurston’s best-known work, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was written over seven weeks in Haiti, and was published in 1937 to very little notice. Even though it contains a rare incidence of what is known to beekeepers as “Apian-porn.” Then in 1973, Alice Walker ‘discovered’ Hurston and her work. Since then, millions of copies have been sold all over the world, it is taught in schools everywhere, and even a Halle Berry movie has been made.
The writer’s life did not end well. She struggled financially, had serious health issues, and died in a welfare home in St Lucie, Florida in 1960.
But Walker’s discovery and resuscitation has wrought great changes. Eatonville now hosts a Hurston Festival every year, and there is a Zora Neal Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts.
Sharon shared with us her experience of hearing the latest biographer, Valerie Boyd, speak, on January 7, which is Hurston’s birthday. She then emailed with the writer, until her untimely death at 58.
Zora Neal Hurston remains with us. Her play written with Langston Hugues, Mule Bone, was finally produced on Broadway in 1991. Her words keep resonating, as her quote: “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
Members read from Hurston’s autobiography, Dust Tracks, from Jonah’s Gourd Vine, from Their Eyes Were Watching God, and from Valerie Boyd’s Wrapped in Rainbows.
Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner, Recording Secretary
No comments:
Post a Comment