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Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica

Page 26

by Zora Neale Hurston


  Byrd, James W. “Zora Neale Hurston: A Novel Folklorist.” Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin 21 (1955): 37–41.

  Cooke, Michael G. “Solitude: The Beginnings of Self-Realization in Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison.” In Michael G. Cooke, Afro-American Literature in the Twentieth Century, pp. 71–110. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.

  Dance, Daryl C. “Zora Neale Hurston.” In American Women Writers: Bibliographical Essays, edited by Maurice Duke, et al. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983.

  Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. “The Speakerly Text.” In Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Signifying Monkey, pp. 170–217. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

  Giles, James R. “The Significance of Time in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Negro American Literature Forum 6 (Summer 1972): 52–53, 60.

  Hemenway, Robert E. Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1977.

  Holloway, Karla. The Character of the Word: The Texts of Zora Neale Hurston. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1987.

  Holt, Elvin. “Zora Neale Hurston.” In Fifty Southern Writers After 1900, edited by Joseph M. Flura and Robert Bain, pp. 259–69. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1987.

  Howard, Lillie Pearl. Zora Neale Hurston. Boston: Twayne, 1980.

  ——. “Zora Neale Hurston.” In Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 51, edited by Trudier Harris, pp. 133–45. Detroit: Gale, 1987.

  Jackson, Blyden. “Some Negroes in the Land of Goshen.” Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin 19 (4) (December 1953): 103–7.

  Johnson, Barbara. “Metaphor, Metonymy, and Voice in Their Eyes.” In Black Literature and Literary Theory, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., pp. 205–21. New York: Methuen, 1984.

  ——. “Thresholds of Difference: Structures of Address in Zora Neale Hurston.” In “Race,” Writing and Difference, edited by Henry Lewis Gates, Jr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.

  Jordan, June. “On Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston.” Black World 23 (10) (August 1974): 4–8.

  Kubitschek, Missy Dehn.” Tuh de Horizon and Back’: The Female Quest in Their Eyes.” Black American Literature Forum 17 (3) (Fall 1983): 109–15.

  Lionnet, Françoise. “Autoethnography: The Anarchic Style of Dust Tracks on a Road.” In Françoise Lionnet, Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, Self-Portraiture, pp. 97–130. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989.

  Lupton, Mary Jane. “Zora Neale Hurston and the Survival of the Female.” Southern Literary Journal 15 (Fall 1982): 45–54.

  Meese, Elizabeth. “Orality and Textuality in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes.” In Elizabeth Meese, Crossing the Double Cross: The Practice of Feminist Criticism, pp. 39–55. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.

  Newson, Adele S. Zora Neale Hurston: A Reference Guide. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987.

  Rayson, Ann. “Dust Tracks on a Road: Zora Neale Hurston and the Form of Black Autobiography.” Negro American Literature Forum 7 (Summer 1973): 42–44.

  Sheffey, Ruthe T., ed. A Rainbow Round Her Shoulder: The Zora Neale Hurston Symposium Papers. Baltimore: Morgan State University Press, 1982.

  Smith, Barbara. “Sexual Politics and the Fiction of Zora Neale Hurston.” Radical Teacher 8 (May 1978): 26–30.

  Stepto, Robert B. From Behind the Veil. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979.

  Walker, Alice. “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston.” Ms., March 1975, pp. 74–79, 85–89.

  Wall, Cheryl A. “Zora Neale Hurston: Changing Her Own Words.” In American Novelists Revisited: Essays in Feminist Criticism, edited by Fritz Fleischmann, pp. 370–93. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982.

  Washington, Mary Helen. “Zora Neale Hurston: A Woman Half in Shadow.” Introduction to I Love Myself When I Am Laughing, edited by Alice Walker. Old Westbury, N.Y.: Feminist Press, 1979.

  ——. “‘ Love the Way janie Crawford Left Her Husbands’: Zora Neale Hurston’s Emergent Female Hero.” In Mary Helen Washington, Invented Lives: Narratives of Black Women, 1860–1960. New York: Anchor Press, 1987.

  Willis, Miriam. “Folklore and the Creative Artist: Lydia Cabrera and Zora Neale Hurston.” CLA Journal 27 (September 1983): 81–90.

  Wolff, Maria Tai. “Listening and Living: Reading and Experience in Their Eyes.” BALF 16 (1) (Spring 1982): 29–33.

  CHRONOLOGY

  January 7, 1891

  Born in Eatonville, Florida, the fifth of eight children, to John Hurston, a carpenter and Baptist preacher, and Lucy Potts Hurston, a former schoolteacher.

  September 1917–June 1918

  Attends Morgan Academy in Baltimore, completing the high school requirements.

  Summer 1918

  Works as a waitress in a nightclub and a manicurist in a black-owned barbershop that serves only whites.

  1918–19

  Attends Howard Prep School, Washington, D.C.

  1919–24

  Attends Howard University; receives an associate degree in 1920.

  1921

  Publishes her first story, “John Redding Goes to Sea,” in the Stylus, the campus literary society’s magazine.

  December 1924

  Publishes “Drenched in Light,” a short story, in Opportunity.

  1925

  Submits a story, “Spunk,” and a play, Color Struck, to Opportunity’s literary contest. Both win second-place awards; publishes “Spunk” in the June number.

  1925–27

  Attends Barnard College, studying anthropology with Franz Boas.

  1926

  Begins field work for Boas in Harlem.

  January 1926

  Publishes “John Redding Goes to Sea” in Opportunity.

  Summer 1926

  Organizes Fire! with Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman; they publish only one issue, in November 1926. The issue includes Hurston’s “Sweat.”

  August 1926

  Publishes “Muttsy” in Opportunity.

  September 1926

  Publishes “Possum or Pig” in the Forum.

  September–November 1926

  Publishes “The Eatonville Anthology” in the Messenger.

  1927

  Publishes The First One, a play, in Charles S. Johnson’s Ebony and Topaz.

  February 1927

  Goes to Florida to collect folklore.

  May 19, 1927

  Marries Herbert Sheen.

  September 1927

  First visits Mrs. Rufus Osgood Mason, seeking patronage.

  October 1927

  Publishes an account of the black settlement at St. Augustine, Florida, in the Journal of Negro History; also in this issue: “Cudjo’s Own Story of the Last African Slaver.”

  December 1927

  Signs a contract with Mason, enabling her to return to the South to collect folklore.

  1928

  Satirized as “Sweetie Mae Carr” in Wallace Thurman’s novel about the Harlem Renaissance Infants of the Spring; receives a bachelor of arts degree from Barnard.

  January 1928

  Relations with Sheen break off.

  May 1928

  Publishes “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” in the World Tomorrow.

  1930–32

  Organizes the field notes that become Mules and Men.

  May–June 1930

  Works on the play Mule Bone with Langston Hughes.

  1931

  Publishes “Hoodoo in America” in the Journal of American Folklore.

  February 1931

  Breaks with Langston Hughes over the authorship of Mule Bone.

  July 7, 1931

  Divorces Sheen.

  September 1931

  Writes for a theatrical revue called Fast and Furious.

  January 1932

  Writes and stages a theatrical revue called The Great Day, first performed on January 10 on Broadway at the John Golden Theatre; works with the creative literature department of Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, to produce
a concert program of Negro music.

  1933

  Writes “The Fiery Chariot.”

  January 1933

  Stages From Sun to Sun (a version of Great Day) at Rollins College.

  August 1933

  Publishes “The Gilded Six-Bits” in Story.

  1934

  Publishes six essays in Nancy Cunard’s anthology, Negro.

  January 1934

  Goes to Bethune-Cookman College to establish a school of dramatic arts “based on pure Negro expression.”

  May 1934

  Publishes Jonah’s Gourd Vine, originally titled Big Nigger; it is a Book-of-the-Month Club selection.

  September 1934

  Publishes “The Fire and the Cloud” in the Challenge.

  November 1934

  Singing Steel (a version of Great Day) performed in Chicago.

  January 1935

  Makes an abortive attempt to study for a Ph.D in anthropology at Columbia University on a fellowship from the Rosenwald Foundation. In fact, she seldom attends classes.

  August 1935

  Joins the WPA Federal Theatre Project as a “dramatic coach.”

  October 1935

  Mules and Men published.

  March 1936

  Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study West Indian Obeah practices.

  April–September 1936

  In Jamaica.

  September–March 1937

  In Haiti; writes Their Eyes Were Watching God in seven weeks.

  May 1937

  Returns to Haiti on a renewed Guggenheim.

  September 1937

  Returns to the United States; Their Eyes Were Watching God published, September 18.

  February–March 1938

  Writes Tell My Horse; it is published the same year.

  April 1938

  Joins the Federal Writers Project in Florida to work on The Florida Negro.

  1939

  Publishes “Now Take Noses” in Cordially Yours.

  June 1939

  Receives an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Morgan State College.

  June 27, 1939

  Marries Albert Price III in Florida.

  Summer 1939

  Hired as a drama instructor by North Carolina College for Negroes at Durham; meets Paul Green, professor of drama, at the University of North Carolina.

  November 1939

  Moses, Man of the Mountain published.

  February 1940

  Files for divorce from Price, though the two are reconciled briefly.

  Summer 1940

  Makes a folklore-collecting trip to South Carolina.

  Spring–July 1941

  Writes Dust Tracks on a Road.

  July 1941

  Publishes “Cock Robin, Beale Street” in the Southern Literary Messenger.

  October 1941–January 1942

  Works as a story consultant at Paramount Pictures.

  July 1942

  Publishes “Story in Harlem Slang” in the American Mercury.

  September 5, 1942

  Publishes a profile of Lawrence Silas in the Saturday Evening Post.

  November 1942

  Dust Tracks on a Road published.

  February 1943

  Awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Race Relations for Dust Tracks; on the cover of the Saturday Review.

  March 1943

  Receives Howard University’s Distinguished Alumni Award.

  May 1943

  Publishes “The ‘Pet Negro’ Syndrome” in the American Mercury.

  November 1943

  Divorce from Price granted.

  June 1944

  Publishes “My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience” in the Negro Digest.

  1945

  Writes Mrs. Doctor; it is rejected by Lippincott.

  March 1945

  Publishes “The Rise of the Begging Joints” in the American Mercury.

  December 1945

  Publishes “Crazy for This Democracy” in the Negro Digest.

  1947

  Publishes a review of Robert Tallant’s Voodoo in New Orleans in the Journal of American Folklore.

  May 1947

  Goes to British Honduras to research black communities in Central America; writes Seraph on the Suwanee; stays in Honduras until March 1948.

  September 1948

  Falsely accused of molesting a ten-year-old boy and arrested; case finally dismissed in March 1949.

  October 1948

  Seraph on the Suwanee published.

  March 1950

  Publishes “Conscience of the Court” in the Saturday Evening Post, while working as a maid in Rivo Island, Florida.

  April 1950

  Publishes “What White Publishers Won’t Print” in the Saturday Evening Post.

  November 1950

  Publishes “I Saw Negro Votes Peddled” in the American Legion magazine.

  Winter 1950–51

  Moves to Belle Glade, Florida.

  June 1951

  Publishes “Why the Negro Won’t Buy Communism” in the American Legion magazine.

  December 8, 1951

  Publishes “A Negro Voter Sizes Up Taft” in the Saturday Evening Post.

  1952

  Hired by the Pittsburgh Courier to cover the Ruby McCollum case.

  May 1956

  Receives an award for “education and human relations” at Bethune-Cookman College.

  June 1956

  Works as a librarian at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida; fired in 1957.

  1957–59

  Writes a column on “Hoodoo and Black Magic” for the Fort Pierce Chronicle.

  1958

  Works as a substitute teacher at Lincoln Park Academy, Fort Pierce.

  Early 1959

  Suffers a stroke.

  October 1959

  Forced to enter the St. Lucie County Welfare Home.

  January 28, 1960

  Dies in the St. Lucie County Welfare Home of “hypertensive heart disease”; buried in an unmarked grave in the Garden of Heavenly Rest, Fort Pierce.

  August 1973

  Alice Walker discovers and marks Hurston’s grave.

  March 1975

  Walker publishes “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston,” in Ms., launching a Hurston revival.

  About the Author

  ZORA NEALE HURSTON (1891-1960) was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist whose fictional and factual accounts of black heritage are unparalleled. She is the author of Jonah’s Gourd Vine, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Mules and Men, and Dust Tracks on a Road.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Copyright

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  TELL MY HORSE. Copyright © 1938 by Zora Neale Hurston. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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