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For the folklore Hurston collected so meticulously as Franz Boas's student at Barnard became metaphors,
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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He's got uh throne in de seat of his pants.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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Six eyes were questioning God.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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Hurrying, dragging, falling, crying, calling out names hopefully and hopelessly.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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Common danger made common friends. Nothing sought a conquest over the other.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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Then she starched and ironed her face, forming it into just what people wanted to see,
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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Janie knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making.
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god
world
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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a5da0b0
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They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgment.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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Crushing aromatic herbs with every step he took. Spices hung about him. He was a glance from God.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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the fiend from hell specially sent to lovers arrived at Janie's ear. Doubt.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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You'se something tuh make uh man forgit tuh git old and forgit tuh die.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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Life, inexhaustible, goes on. And we do too. Carrying our wounds and our medicines as we go. Ours is an amazing, a spectacular, journey in the Americas. It is so remarkable one can only be thankful for it, bizarre as that may sound. Perhaps our planet is for learning to appreciate the extraordinary wonder of life that surrounds even our suffering, and to say Yes, if through the thickest of tears.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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He done taught me de maiden language all over.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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on. Then Tea Cake would help get supper afterwards. "You don't think Ah'm tryin' tuh git outa takin' keer uh yuh, do yuh, Janie, 'cause Ah ast yuh tuh work long side uh me?" Tea Cake asked her at the end of her first week in the field. "Ah naw, honey. Ah laks it. It's mo' nicer than settin' round dese quarters all day. Clerkin' in dat store wuz hard, but heah, we ain't got nothin' tuh do but do our work and come home and love."
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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She went on in her overalls. She was too busy feeling grief to dress like grief.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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Oh to be a pear tree--any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world! She was sixteen. She had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her. Where were the singing bees for her?
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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In a little wind-lull, Tea Cake touched Janie and said, 'Ah reckon you wish now you had of stayed in yo' big house 'way from such as dis, don't yuh?' 'Naw.' 'Naw?' 'Yeah, naw. People don't die till dey time come nohow, don't keer where you at. Ah'm wid mah husband in uh storm, dat's all.' 'Thanky, Ma'am. But 'sposing you wuz tuh die, now. You wouldn't git mad at me for draggin' yuh heah?' 'Naw. We been tuhgether round two years. If you kin..
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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Janie, Ah hope God may kill me, if Ah'm lyin'. Nobody else on earth kin hold uh candle tuh you, baby. You got de keys to de kingdom.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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No, I do not weep at the world - I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.
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racism
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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But stillness was the sleep of swords.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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Mouths don't empty themselves unless ears are sympathetic and knowing.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do t..
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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You cannot avoid hearing drums in Haiti.
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travel
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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And twelve more white men had stopped whatever they were doing to listen and pass on what happened between Janie and Tea Cake Woods, and as to whether things were done right or not. That was funny too. Twelve strange men who didn't know a thing about people like Tea Cake and her were going to sit on the thing. Eight or ten white women had come to look at her too. They wore good clothes and had the pinky color that comes of good food. They w..
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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But the inescapable fact that stuck in my craw, was: my people had sold me and the white people had bought me. . . . It impressed upon me the universal nature of greed and glory. --Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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Alice Walker published her important essay ("In Search of Zora Neale Hurston") in Ms. magazine in 1975,"
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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The Estate of Zora Neale Hurston would like to thank those people who have worked so hard over the years in introducing new generations of readers to the work of Zora Neale Hurston. We are indebted to Robert Hemenway, Alice Walker, and all the Modern Language Association folks who helped usher in Zora's rediscovery.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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This use of the vernacular became the fundamental framework for all but one of her novels and is particularly effective in her classic work Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937, which is more closely related to Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady and Jean Toomer's Cane than to Langston Hughes's and Richard Wright's proletarian literature, so popular in the Depression.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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don't say you'se ole. You'se uh lil girl baby all de time. God made it so you spent yo' ole age first wid somebody else, and saved up yo' young girl days to spend wid me.
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old-age
young-at-heart
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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She hated the old woman who had twisted her so in the name of love. Most humans didn't love one another nohow, and this mislove was so strong that even common blood couldn't overcome it all the time.
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love
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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Times and scenes like that put Janie to thinking about the inside state of her marriage. Time came when she fought back with her tongue as best she could, but it didn't do her any good. It just made Joe do more. He wanted her submission and he'd keep on fighting until he felt he had it. So gradually, she pressed her teeth together and learned to hush. The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor. It was there..
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ending-relationships
growing-apart
marriage
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don't keer if you die at dusk. It's so many people never seen de light at all. Ah
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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Stepto was quite convinced (and convincing) that the frame story in which Janie speaks to Pheoby creates only the illusion that Janie has found her voice, that Hurston's insistence on telling Janie's story in the third person undercuts her power as speaker. While the rest of us in the room struggled to find our voices, Alice Walker rose and claimed hers, insisting passionately that women did not have to speak when men thought they should, t..
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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Hurston moves in and out of these distinct voices effortlessly, seamlessly, just as she does in Their Eyes to chart Janie's coming to consciousness. It is this usage of a divided voice, a double voice unreconciled, that strikes me as her great achievement, a verbal analogue of her double experiences as a woman in a male-dominated world and as a black person in a nonblack world, a woman writer's revision of W. E. B. Du Bois's metaphor of "do..
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Zora Neale Hurston |