Zora Neale Hurston

"One of the most acclaimed artists of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston was a gifted novelist, playwright, and essayist. Drawn from three decades of her work, this anthology showcases her development as a writer, from her early pieces expounding on the beauty and precision of African American art to some of her final published works, covering the sensational trial of Ruby McCollum, a wealthy Black woman convicted in 1952 for killing a white...

"In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation's history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo's firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave...

The acclaimed author of Their Eyes Were Watching God relates her experiences as an African American woman in early-twentieth-century America. In this autobiographical essay, author Zora Neale Hurston recounts episodes from her childhood in different communities in Florida: Eatonville and Jacksonville. She reflects on what those experiences showed her about race, identity, and feeling different. "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" was originally published...

From Zora Neale Hurston, one of the most important African American writers of the twentieth century, comes her riveting autobiography-now available in a limited Olive Edition. First published in 1942 at the height of her popularity, Dust Tracks on a Road is Zora Neale Hurston's candid, funny, bold, and poignant autobiography-an imaginative and exuberant account of her childhood in the rural South and her rise to a prominent place among the leading...

An Instant New York Times and Indie Bestseller! In the first middle grade offering from Zora Neale Hurston and Ibram X. Kendi, young readers are introduced to the remarkable and true-life story of Cudjo Lewis, one of the last survivors of the Atlantic human trade, in an adaptation of the internationally bestselling and critically acclaimed Barracoon. This is the life story of Cudjo Lewis, as told by himself. Of the millions of men, women, and children...

"Maybe, now, we used-to-be black African folks can be of some help to our brothers and sisters who have always been white. You will take another look at us and say that we are still black and, ethnologically speaking, you will be right. But nationally and culturally, we are as white as the next one. We have put our labor and our blood into the common causes for a long time. We have given the rest of the nation song and laughter. Maybe now, in this...

In this 1939 novel based on the familiar story of the Exodus, Zora Neale Hurston blends the Moses of the Old Testament with the Moses of black folklore and song to create a compelling allegory of power, redemption, and faith. Narrated in a mixture of biblical rhetoric, black dialect, and colloquial English, Hurston traces Moses's life from the day he is launched into the Nile river in a reed basket, to his development as a great magician, to his transformation...

Originally published in The Journal of Negro History, this fascinating and important work records the recollections of Cudjo Lewis, one of the last surviving captives of the Clotilde, the final ship to dock in the United States with a cargo of African slaves. Lewis and Zora Neale Hurston provide an ethnography of Lewis's own Togo people, detail his capture by warriors of the Kingdom of Dahomey, hardship and strife aboard the Clotilde en route to port...

An aspect of the race problem ignored by zealous reformers: The "Pet Negro" system.

“The Mule-Bone”, written by renowned African American poet Langston Hughes, is a satirical play that engages the complexities of race relations and the significance of the cultural heritage of African Americans in the early 20th century. The play follows two friends, Dave and Bones, who enter into a heated debate about which one of them will be able to buy a mule at an auction.