Word: hurston
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
MULE BONE. Famed among scholars of black literature as an intriguing might- have-been, this 1930 collaboration between Harlem poet Langston Hughes and fiction writer Zora Neale Hurston needed 61 years, and further tinkering, to make it to Broadway. The result, a fable set in a small Florida town, is vibrantly acted and full of charm, its dialectal richness enhanced by twangy Taj Mahal songs...
...never quite fulfilled. While I could read anything during my free time, the scope of the novels I read for academic purposes was severely limited. I frequently found myself asking teachers to make an exception so that I could do outside reading projects on the likes of Baldwin, Hurston or Langston Hughes. I could connect personally with their characters. These people were Black like me. I wanted the opportunity to be captivated by the stories of my people who were speaking from a Black perspective about my history...
...secret that women like Toni Morrison, Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston write from a Black woman's perspective, but can't something similar be said of Shakespeare or Chaucer? Didn't they too write from the perspective of who they were, white English men? If so then why is reading their work mandatory while reading the works of Black American women authors only elective...
...only because I was committed to doing so. I enrolled in classes that covered women's literature and specifically Black women's literature but it is entirely possible to graduate from this institution with an English degree and not be familiar with the works of Naylor, Morrison or Hurston...
...would like to say that higher education serves to open the minds of its students but I can't. As long as the voices of Black women writers like Morrison, Walker and Hurston fall on deaf ears, the minds of many will remain closed and unapproachable...