I Love Myself When I Am Laughing... And Then Again: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader Book

Lively, confident, talented, and prolific are a few of the words that describe Zora Neale Hurston. In the dedication, by Alice Walker, she introduces readers to a woman who loved herself and her people and managed to remain true to herself despite having characteristics that others may have seen as hinderances in Hurston's time, such as being black, woman, non-bourgeoisie, and not favoring a likeness to whiteness.

Mary Helen Washington's introduction, not far off from Walker's view, paints Hurston as one who is enthralled by the culture of black folks and all their folklore. She possesses a deep love for them. So much so, that is it is said that she was staunchly against desegregation, or at least the effects that would come of it. It is implied, and I suspect, that Hurston felt that it was sort of a slap in the face to black culture and black educators. Desegregation implied a subconscious level inferiority of the black race to educate themselves, as it was considered as "making progress" to receive an education from a "white institution." Hurston was definitely not one to be "tragically colored" and loved her blackness, and felt that blacks contributed to society in their own dynamic and embellished way. Hurston's point of view is not hard to understand giving that she was from the all black, self-sufficient town of Eatonville.

Hurston had an independent mind, and was so much ahead of her time. Here you have a woman, who lost her mother at a very young age, managed to go to college, to study and do folklore research, and be such a prolific writer! This was at a time, when most of the black population in the U.S. barely knew how to read and write. Perhaps, this is why she was so under-appreciated during her life. Even the people she studied for folklore research really did not understand what she was doing or why. They wrote it off as folly, but still entertained her nonetheless. The popular, black male writers, at the time, many of whom made their literary mark by writing about "the race problem," were not ready for an independent-minded woman who didn't dwell on the "tragedies" of being black. Many of them trashed her character and her work.

Hurston's work represents "wholeness." She gives well-rounded depictions of black life. The good, the bad, the truth, never seemingly sugar-coated. Yet, she is not demeaning, and her characters rarely come off as stereotypical. Hurston sees no need in refining herself or her characters for acceptance, and there is no instance of encouraging others to do so in her work.

Her work is afro-centered, although there is little discussion of racial politics. Perhaps this was an issue for other black writers, mainly men, of her time. There is an account in "Dust Tracks" where she meets Cudjo Lewis, an African who was a victim of the slave trade. He gave a somber account of how African people had kidnapped, murdered, and sold other Africans into slavery before the white man began making his profit from the slave trade. It is a sobering account for one to hear, especially in an environment where many blacks pinpoint white racism as a root cause of many disparities, and tend to paint a picturesque scene of Africa. Hurston does not discredit racism as an issue; she actually does not elaborate or participate in the debate at all. She simply states a powerful truth. Zora writes how the time spent with Lewis had a deep impression on her as she comes to the mental realization that, "my people sold me."

Hurston is not only a storyteller, but also an anthropologist. Her studying and cultural research show through in her writing in her use of the vernacular language of whatever group of people she was writing about. She has managed to catalogue some of the vernacular language, folklore, and culture of the people in her hometown of Eatonville, the people in Florida, and the Jamaican people. Her work is important, as it preserves life as it was for those people at that particular time, and how they talked and related with one another. She has preserved these cultural aspects that where dying then, and if not already dead, are still dying in our society today.

In her essay, "The Pet Negro System" Hurston epitomizes how a white person can be "accepting" of an individual Black person, yet still be racist as it refers to the whole race in general. She practically destroys the whole defense of "I have a black friend" that so many whites use, evidently, not just in Hurston's time, but long after. She expounds on how the "system" works both ways and how these "pet Negros" benefit from these relationships. Alternatively, identifying the complex relationships between whites and blacks of the South, and how blacks contribute to maintaining the status quo of life in the South. It sounds very counter-progressive to blacks on the surface, but trust, Hurston tells it like it is. By far to me, this was the most profound piece, as a whole, in this collection of writings in this particular reader.

In her essay "What White Publishers Won't Print," Hurston talks about the one-sided, stereotypical narratives that are forced on blacks. Narratives that are not far-fetched from stereotypical depictions of blacks today as brutes and savages. Once again, Hurston impresses me with her attention to the wholeness and fullness of black life. Arguing that we are capable of anything as any other race, if given the same opportunities.

Hurston doesn't focus on the "race problem" in her work because she knows that we are more than just that, and that other things encompass the substance of our lives. Her work takes you on a journey deep into the black consciousness. She captures the mood, feelings, sounds, music, language, and more. Even to the point where it is sometimes hard for "outsiders" of the culture to understand. She presents a certain wholeness to the complexities of black life, and its complex relationships to it's counterpart-white life. Her depictions and analysis are honest. They are not so cut and dry and black and white as some may want you to believe, such as Hurston's critics. It is important to have work that focuses on the race problem, to deeply analyze it, to get to the roots of it. However, it is also critically important to have work that presents the other situations and circumstances that make up black life-the ones that all people can relate to, not just blacks. Things such as love, hate, jealousy, infidelity, greed. Hence, the importance of Zora's work. It is indeed very and uniquely black, yet it is simultaneously universal. We are not tragically colored. We are not always the victim as the race problem writers love to express. In fact, sometimes we are the perpetrators. Sometimes, we assist in perpetuating the system that antagonizes our race. Sometimes we turn our backs on our own for personal gain. Not all of us are unskilled laborers and poor. Some of us are highly skilled and wealthy. That is not to pass judgement on any particular socio-economic class or on any group regardless of the level of education. It is simply just the truth. Zora's work encompasses all of these things.