Zora Neale Hurston's 1935 book of folklore, Mules and Men, was praised as the work of a young Negro woman with a college education who has invited the outside world to listen in while her own people are being as natural as they can never be when white folks are literally present. This reflection illustrates Hurston's unique position and her aim to document authentic Black culture.
I have been in sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots. Hurston's vivid metaphor encapsulates her experiences of suffering and resilience, revealing how her pain has informed her writing and connection to her heritage.
Raised in the pure Negro town of Eatonville, Florida, Hurston recalls how her happy childhood, along with those of seven siblings, came to an abrupt end aged 13, when her mother died. Her narrative charts many hardships and a succession of menial jobs, which she mined for her sharp and insightful writing.
Though her first work had been published a decade earlier, there's still a sense of urgency in Mules and Men; she's a writer in a hurry as she returns to the place of her upbringing in the south to gather folk tales such as those about Br'er Rabbit and Br'er Bear, and to set them down before it's too late.
#zora-neale-hurston #posthumous-novel #mules-and-men #african-american-literature #cultural-anthropology
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