by Carla Kaplan
253 “rare selection of things”: Locke to Cornelia Chapin, December 25, 1946, Box 30, Folder 48, Katherine Garrison Chapin Biddle Letters, Biddle Family Letters, Georgetown.
253 “almost a composite”: Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue, 151.
Chapter 7: Imitation of Life: Fannie Hurst’s “Sensation in Harlem”
257 “Sensation in Harlem”: “A Sensation in Harlem,” 10.
257 “white” novel: Gates, back cover blurb, Hurst, Imitation of Life, ed. Itzkovitz.
257 “initial publication”: Itzkovitz, Introduction to Hurst, Imitation of Life, xxxix.
258 extraordinary latitude: For examples of this forbearance, see also Hutchinson, The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White, and Bernard, Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance.
259 betrayal: Harrison-Kahan, The White Negress, 107. Harrison-Kahan does not take the position that Hurst’s novel was a “betrayal,” though she notes that some people have done so.
259 “quiet house”: Hurst, Anatomy of Me, 19.
259 “We did not know anybody”: Hurst, Anatomy of Me, 87.
259 “Intellectual curiosity was languid”: Hurst, Anatomy of Me, 13.
259 “rather spoiled, overweight”: Hurst, Anatomy of Me, 6.
259 “pre-first world-war era”: Hurst, Anatomy of Me, 6.
259 “somnolent world” . . . “wet-blanket”: Hurst, Anatomy of Me, 6, 10.
259 hard at work: Mrs. Ralph Toensfeldt to Fannie Hurst, n.d. (sent in response to Fannie Hurst’s request for reminiscences for her autobiography, Anatomy of Me). Fannie Hurst Papers, Robert D. Farber University Archives and Special Collections Department, Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass. (hereafter abbreviated Brandeis).
260 six hundred calories: Fannie Hurst, daily diet notes, 1940s, Fannie Hurst Papers, Brandeis.
260 “word lapidary”: Hurst, Anatomy of Me, 27.
260 From early on: When she attempted to fulfill the creative writing assignments given to her classmates, for example, in exchange for their doing chemistry and math homework for her, her teacher called her to the office straightaway. Miss Jones “recognized Fannie’s style and expressions and as she looked over each story, she wrote on it, ‘Written by Fannie Hurst.’” Mrs. Frances Lewis to Fannie Hurst, n.d.; Fannie Hurst Papers, Brandeis.
260 “decidedly outstanding”: Mrs. Frances Lewis to Fannie Hurst, n.d. (sent in response to Fannie Hurst’s request for reminiscences from home when she was writing her autobiography, Anatomy of Me, published in 1958); Fannie Hurst Papers, Brandeis.
260 “regard me as the most interesting”: Hurst, Anatomy of Me, 48.
261 equivalent to more than: Consumer Price Index Inflation Calendar, Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm. To date, twenty-eight films have been made from her work.
261 “Even then”: Mrs. Strauss, “Anecdotes Concerning Miss Hurst’s Early Years,” Fannie Hurst Papers, Brandeis.
261 “highly self-conscious”: “Reminiscence,” no author, Fannie Hurst Papers, Brandeis.
261 “pig for success”: Fannie Hurst to Joseph Levy, undated letter [1923], Box 151, Folder 2, HRC.
261 competing even with her dead sister: Hurst, Anatomy of Me, 7–8.
261 “I would have given anything”: Hurst, Anatomy of Me, 42.
261 “sweatshops and tenements”: Itzkovitz, Introduction to Hurst, Imitation of Life, xi.
261 She took her notepad: Kroeger, Fannie, 15.
262 “antediluvian custom”: “Fannie Hurst Wed,” 1.
263 Suffrage League’s invitation: Kroeger, Fannie, 35, 33.
263 “black matters”: Hurst used this phrase to file all those materials having to do with black culture or politics. Her labeled folder is in the Fannie Hurst Papers, HRC.
263 “something I don’t particularly think about”: Floyd Calvin, “No Racial Likes or Dislikes,” in Fannie Hurst’s scrapbooks, 1928–1929, HRC.
263 “to create and stimulate”: National Health Circle for Colored People brochure, Box 189, Folder 3, Fannie Hurst Papers, HRC.
263 “languid . . . happy friendly race”: Kroeger, Fannie, 188; 1927 appeal letter for National Health Circle for Colored People, HRC.
263 “The Southern Negro”: 1928 Christmas Season Appeal, National Health Circle for Colored People, written and signed by Fannie Hurst, Box 189, Folder 3, HRC.
263 the organization’s donors: Chapin’s donor address is listed as 399 Park Avenue.
264 “that I was not in a position”: Fannie Hurst to William H. Kirkpatrick [chairman, Urban League], November 25, 1941, Box 189, Folder 3, Fannie Hurst Papers, HRC.
265 She had appealed for support: Hurston to Annie Nathan Meyer, November 10, 1925, in Kaplan, Zora Neale Hurston, 68.
265 Annie Nathan Meyer had already taken: Hurston to Meyer, November 10, 1925, in Kaplan, Zora Neale Hurston, 68.
265 “Your friendship was”: Hurston to Hurst, March 16 [1926], in Kaplan, Zora Neale Hurston, 85.
265 “I love it!”: Hurston to Constance Sheen, February 2, 1926, in Kaplan, Zora Neale Hurston, 80.
265 So Hurst helped out: Hurston to Constance Sheen, January 5 [1926], in Kaplan, Zora Neale Hurston, 74.
265 And Barnard, which catered: Hurston to Meyer, October 12, 1925, in Kaplan, Zora Neale Hurston, 66.
265 Far worse: Hurston to Meyer, January 15 [1926], in Kaplan, Zora Neale Hurston, 77–78.
265 “Negro Extra”: Hurston to Meyer, January 15 [1926], in Kaplan, Zora Neale Hurston, 78.
265 “She sang with the plangency”: Hurst, “Zora Hurston,” 19.
266 “girl” . . . “characteristics”: Hurst to Annie Nathan Meyer, February 14, 1935; Fannie Hurst to Henry Allen Moe, December 1, 1935, Zora Neale Hurston Files, Fannie Hurst Papers, HRC.
266 “most refreshing unself-consciousness”: Hurst to Henry Allen Moe, December 1, 1933. John Simon Guggenheim files, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, New York.
266 “world’s worst secretary” . . . “‘sea in ships’”: Hurst, “Zora Hurston,” 18, 17.
266 “without a single instance”: Hurston, Dust Tracks, 6, 46.
266 “dilapidated two-room shack”: Hurst, “Zora Hurston,” 18.
266 the family home: Hurston, Dust Tracks, 10–11.
267 “darling of the critics”: Van Gelder, “An Interview with Fannie Hurst,” 2. See also Kroeger, Fannie, 15.
267 “how not to write”: Itzkovitz, Introduction to Hurst, Imitation of Life, xiii.
267 It was on one of their car trips: Hurston to Hurst, February 6, 1940, in Kaplan, Zora Neale Hurston, 452–53.
268 “monotonous” . . . “exacting”: Hurst, Imitation of Life, 1, 5, 10.
269 “security!” . . . “nausea”: Hurst, Imitation of Life, 27, 35, 46, 47.
270 “report back” . . . “Virginie”: Hurst, Imitation of Life, 74–76.
270 “like a vast black sun”: Hurst, Imitation of Life, 78.
270 “walkin’ trade-mark”: Hurst, Imitation of Life, 105.
270 “mammy to the world”: Hurst, Imitation of Life, 86.
270 “rest cure”: Hurst, Imitation of Life, 145.
270 anxious whites: Chandler Owen protested this proposed monument as racist nostalgia for the “slave days when black mammies toiled in the cotton fields, cleaned the houses, cared for the children, nursed them at their bosoms. . . . We don’t want any ‘mammy’ statues anywhere. We want the children of this generation to abhor and forget those days when the white madam had leisure and the black mammy had labor.” “Black Mammies,” 670.
270 “Let it fade away”: Owen, “Black Mammies,” 670.
270 “imitation” . . . “success”: Hurst, Imitation of Life, 107, 263, 124, 112, 157, 180.
271 “man lovin’” . . . “damnation”: Hurst, Imitation of Life, 181, 118, 247.
271 does not get very far: Many critics see the novel as more feminist than I do. Traci Abbott, for example, argues that Hurst was one of the most “significant feminist critic
s of her time” in her treatment of “modern sexual identity.” Abbott, “Every Woman’s Share,” 635.
271 Delilah’s belief that blood: On such signs, and on fingernails, especially, see Sollors, “The Bluish Tinge in the Half Moon,” in Neither Black Nor White, Yet Both, 142–61.
272 “easily-hinged large mouth” . . . “tears”: Hurst, Imitation of Life, 79, 90, 241.
272 “is straight out of Southern fiction”: Brown, “Imitation of Life,” 87–88. Reprinted in Brown, A Son’s Return, ed. Sanders, 289.
272 “Of course they had reasons”: Brown, “Imitation of Life,” 288.
272 “We are a polite people”: Hurston, Mules & Men; this same passage—on featherbed resistance—is repeated verbatim in her “You Don’t Know Us Negroes,” written for The American Mercury and unpublished; “killed” in galleys in 1934.
272 “I have heard” . . . “old stereotype”: Brown, “Imitation of Life,” 288–89.
272 an example of Hurst’s novel: The other white writers Hughes mocked were Julia Peterkin, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her now-forgotten 1928 novel, Scarlet Sister Mary—replete with plantation nostalgia, dialect, and “colorful” black women who just couldn’t help “fallen into sin” and for whom every “cotton-picking . . . work-day is a holiday”; Eugene O’Neill, whose Emperor Jones caused such controversy in New York; and Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose Little Eva and Uncle Tom influenced decades of race relations and racial representations.
272 Reversing the racial roles: Hughes, Limitations of Life, in Black Theatre, USA, ed. Shine and Hatch, 631–32.
273 “The ‘passing’ episodes”: Brown, “Imitation of Life” 289.
273 “grateful”: Hurst, “Letter,” 121; Brown, “Letter,” 121–2. Jane Caputi discusses this exchange as well in “‘Specifying’ Fannie Hurst.”
273 “there was no story”: Bernard, Carl Van Vechten, 129.
273 “rooted identity”: Gilroy, Against Race, 105. By showing race as performance, Maria Sanchez writes, passing “wreaks havoc” on any fixed identity. Sanchez, ed. Passing, 2.
274 A cruel daughter: Both film versions lighten this by having Peola regret her choice and the damage it’s done to her mother.
274 Because the story of passing: An erotics of identity is central, however, to this form. As critic Biman Basu puts it, in the black story of passing, “racial transgression is itself eroticized. . . . The political economy of passing cannot be separated from its economy of desire.” Basu, “Hybrid Embodiment and an Ethics of Masochism,” 384.
274 Although she supported Hurst: Hurston’s careful attitude toward Hurst has often been misread. Hurst editor Daniel Itzkovitz maintains, for example, that “when the novel came under attack . . . Hurston . . . became one of its staunchest supporters,” Itzkovitz, Introduction to Imitation of Life, xxvi-xxvii.
274 Hurst’s Delilah was also half Hurston: Hurst’s editor Daniel Itzkovitz argues the opposite. “Delilah is of course no Zora Neale Hurston,” he wrote. Introduction to Imitation of Life, xxvi. Oddly, no critic I am aware of has commented on the Delilah-Hurston connection.
274 “childlike manner”: Hurst, “Zora Hurston,” 18–20.
275 “stunned when she found”: Itzkovitz, Introduction to Imitation of Life, vii–viii, xxxii.
275 it would always be: Kroeger, Fannie, 178. Hurst made use of this very trope of inequality in Imitation of Life: to show Bea’s sense of alienation from her husband, she has Bea refer to him, even to herself, always as “Mr. Pullman.” By way of contrast, Josephine Cogdell Schuyler always addressed her friend Langston Hughes as “Dear Mr. Hughes.”
275 “the other, and unknown, Harlem”: Hurst, “The Other, and Unknown, Harlem,” 96ff.
275 “You Don’t Know Us Negroes”: Hurston, “You Don’t Know Us Negroes.” Typeset galleys, Ms. Collection, LOC.
276 “The Pet Negro System”: Hurston, “The ‘Pet Negro’ System.”
276 trying to speak across: Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God.
276 “un-selfconsciousness”: Hurst, Introduction, Hurston, Jonah’s Gourd Vine. Hurst’s Introduction is rarely reprinted.
277 “false luxury”: Collins, Seeing a Color Blind Future, 5. On “color blindness” as “not the opposite of racism” but “another form of racism,” see also Carr, “Color-Blind” Racism; Dyson, Race Rules; and Bonilla-Silva, Racism Without Racists.
277 “possessive investment”: Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness.
277 “admirable” . . . “onerous”: Dreisinger, Near, 148–49.
277 As a Jew: Hurston’s biographer Robert Hemenway has also argued that one of the reasons Fannie Hurst loved Hurston was that Hurston made Hurst seem whiter. Hemenway, Zora Neale Hurston.
Chapter 8: Nancy Cunard: “I Speak as If I Were a Negro Myself”
279 “Maybe I was African one time”: The epigraph is from a letter from Nancy Cunard to Mrs. Davies, March 20 [1931], Cunard Papers, Harry Ransom Center, Austin, Texas (hereafter abbreviated HRC). Nancy Cunard to Alfred M. Cruickshank, “The People,” February 15, 1941, clipping, Box 27, Folder 5, HRC.
279 “I longed for an American white friend”: Nancy Cunard to Charles Burkhart. In Ford, ed., Nancy Cunard, 328 (hereafter abbreviated BPIR).
279 “a mauve tulle scarf”: Sketch, March 29, 1922, scrapbook 1913–1921, Box 26, Folder 1, HRC.
281 Robeson’s white lover: Duberman, Paul Robeson, 143.
281 And Nancy’s black lover: Cunard, “Does Anyone Know Any Negroes?”
281 admitted black guests: More famous hotels, such as the elegant Hotel Teresa, “Harlem’s Waldorf-Astoria,” did not accept black guests until 1940.
281 “one of those women”: Huxley, Point Counter Point, 9. Huxley is describing a fictional character based on Nancy Cunard.
281 “blather and ballyhoo”: Cunard, Grand Man, 99.
282 “Racket my dear Sir”: Typed copy of Nancy Cunard’s telegram, Nancy Cunard Papers, HRC.
282 A hastily produced Movietone newsreel: Gordon, “‘The Green Hat’ Comes to Chambers Street,” BPIR, 134. No known copies of the newsreel survive.
282 The British press: The Empire News, Manchester, May 8, 1932, copy retyped by Nancy Cunard, Nancy Cunard papers, HRC.
282 “outrageous lies, fantastic inventions”: Cunard, Grand Man, 99.
282 “nothing at all”: Duberman, Paul Robeson, 158.
282 “sex motive”: Cunard, “The American Moron and the American of Sense,” in Negro, ed. Cunard, 197. Very few copies of Cunard’s original Negro are extant and the few that come onto the market sell for upwards of $10,000 in good condition. Even this Greenwood/Negro Universities Press reprint edition is exceedingly rare, and I am enormously grateful to Jane Marcus for making her copy available to me for photocopying. Later, more readily available reprint editions by Ungar Publishing are only partial.
282 “Press Gentlemen”: Nancy’s typed copy of press release, May 2, 1932, Nancy Cunard Papers, HRC.
283 “very slim”: Garnett, “Nancy Cunard,” in BPIR, 26.
283 “delicacy and steel”: Mortimer, “Nancy Cunard,” in BPIR, 48.
283 “crystalline quality”: Acton, “Nancy Cunard: Romantic Rebel,” in BPIR, 73.
284 “half sick”: Banting, “Nancy Cunard,” in BPIR, 182.
284 Fending off . . . she promised: Whittaker later claimed that Nancy expressed delight in the publicity the press conference would provide for her book, calling it “ripping” good “ballyhoo.” Not only was Nancy too angry at press misstatements to consider her hour with the press mere “ballyhoo,” but every other account of the press conference stresses the gravitas—not silliness—with which she confronted the press. Nancy Cunard, press statement, May 2, 1932; “Nancy Cunard Stopping at Harlem Hotel” and “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” 1; Whittaker, “Miss Cunard Asks Aid”; “Nancy Cunard Defends Life with Negroes”; Nancy Cunard’s account of “Incidents with the American Press, Spring 1932,” all in Nancy Cunard Papers, HRC.
285 “race-hysteria exploded”: Cunard, Grand Man, 99.
285 weighted with slugs: Marcus, “Bonding and Bondage,” in Borders, Boundaries, and Frames, ed. Henderson, 63, n. 11.
285 “insane” . . . “quick”: Cunard, “The American Moron,” in Negro, ed. Cunard, 198–99.
285 “extraordinary”: Cunard, Grand Man, 99.
285 “any interest”: Cunard, “The American Moron,” in Negro, ed. Cunard, 197.
285 “ornate and rococo outbursts”: Cunard, Grand Man, 99–100.
285 “lousy hoor”: Nancy Cunard, Box 17, Folder 12; Box 19, HRC. “This is my third letter that I’m writing you,” another letter in this set lamented, “and I can’t understand why I do not receive your answer, in my two letter that I wrote to you I asked if you will . . . marry me or not . . . you are just the kind of woman I need.”
286 Images of rebellious “New Women”: See, e.g., “Chic Safari,” Neiman Marcus Advertisement, The New York Times, Style section, April 25, 2010, for Nancy’s recurring image in popular culture and advertising.
286 “crazy letters”: Cunard, Grand Man, 99.
286 “The Guilt of Our Immunity”: Tree, “We Shall Not Forget,” BPIR, 22; Nancy Cunard scrapbook, Box 26, HRC. Most of Cunard’s scrapbooks are undated, with the exception of her scrapbook of 1913–1921. Other scrapbooks are, by and large, either specific to unnamed time periods or subject-specific, such as her scrapbook of congratulatory correspondence and materials upon the publication of Negro.
286 “She was of course a born fighter”: BPIR, 329.
286 “What was it, Madam”: Cruickshank, “To Miss Nancy Cunard,” The People. Also published in The Teacher’s Herald, December 1940. Nancy Cunard’s scrapbooks, Box 27, Folder 5, HRC.
287 “Our lives are wars”: Nancy Cunard, “To Alfred Cruickshank,” The People, Saturday, February 15, 1940, Box 27, Folder 5, HRC.
287 Rights claims have insisted: On the politics of recognition, see especially Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism, ed. Gutman; Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition; and Appiah, The Ethics of Identity.
