Reviews for Zora in Florida

The average rating for Zora in Florida based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-03-05 00:00:00 Barbara Slovan "Yeah, man. Love is a funny thing; love is a blossom. If you want yo' finger bit poke it at a possum." A 1935 ethnographic collection, it sounds dreadful. I liked it. I think this woman is great. This is this the result of Zora Neale Hurston's second field effort to collect African-American folklore. The first was a failure. She must have learned a lot. She captured not just stories, but voices that tell them. Cultural anthropologist of her day didn't like her participation within the storytelling, or maybe they resented how effective she was at collecting folklore. Her male peers in the Harlem Renaissance didn't think she was bitter enough, disliked the laughter, and perpetuated white stereotypes. Well, she calls them "the Niggerati," so there's probably a lot of backstory that we don't know. By the mid-1950's her writing was out of print, and she died impoverished. Praise from Alice Walker in the mid-1970s sparked a renewed interest. All of Hurston's major works have been republished. I'll add the start of her introduction. You decide if want more. I was glad when somebody told me, "You may go and collect Negro folklore." In a way it would not be a new experience for me. When I pitched headforemost into the world I landed in in the crib of negroism. From the earliest rocking of my cradle, I had known about the capers Brer Rabbit is apt to cut and what Squinch Owl says from the house top. But it was fitting like a tight chemise. I couldn't see it for wearing it. It was only when I was off in college, away from my native surroundings that I could see myself like somebody else and stand off and look at my garment. Then I had to have the spyglass of Anthropology to look through at that. Dr. Boas asked me where I wanted to work and I said, "Florida," and gave, as my big reason, that "Florida is a place that draws people, white people from all the world, and Negroes from every Southern state surely and some from the North and West." So I knew that it was possible for me to get cross section of the Negro South in the one state. And then I realized that I was new myself, so it looked sensible for me, choose familiar ground. First place I aimed to stop to collect material was Eatonville, Florida. And now, I'm going to tell you why I decided to go to my native village first. I didn't go back there so that the home could make admiration over me because I had been up North to college and come back with a diploma and a Chevrolet. I knew they were not going to pay either one of these I items too much mind. I was just Lucy Hurston's daughter, Zora and even if I had, to use one of our down home expressions, had a Kaiser baby, and that's something that hasn't been done in this Country yet, I'd still be just Zora to the neighbors. If I had exalted myself to impress the town, somebody would have sent me word in a matchbox that I had been up North there and had rubbed the hair off of my head against some college wall, and then come back there with a lot of form and fashion and outside show to the world. But they'd stand flatfooted and tell me that they didn't have me, neither my sham-polish, to study 'bout. And that would have been that. I hurried back to Eatonville because I knew that the town was full of material and that I could get it without hurt, harm or danger. As early as I could remember it was the habit of the men folks particularly to gather on the store porch of evenings and swap stories. Even the women folks would stop and break a breath with them at times. As a child when I was sent down to Joe Clarke's store, I'd drag out my leaving as long as possible in order to hear more. Folklore is not as easy to collect as it sounds. The best source is where there are the least outside influences and these people, being usually underprivileged, are the shyest. They are most reluctant at times to reveal that which the soul lives by. And the Negro, in spite of his open faced laughter, his seeming acquiescence, is particularly evasive. You see we are a polite people and we do not say to our questioner, "Get out of here!" We smile and tell him or her something that satisfies the white person because, knowing so little about us, he doesn't know what he is missing. The Indian resists curiosity by a stony silence. The Negro offers a feather bed resistance, that is, we let the probe enter, but it never comes out. It gets smothered under a lot of laughter and pleasantries.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-07-11 00:00:00 Melina Sfakianaki This is a short story collection from the ingenious author Zora Neale Hurston. I would suggest reading Their Eyes Were Watching God and if you enjoy the style, dive deeply and fearlessly into her universe with Mules and Men.