I’ve been in sorrow’s kitchen and licked all the pots. Then I stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows with a harp and a sword in my hands. – Zora Neale Hurston
She’s a phenomenal, extraordinary, courageous and talented woman whose literary legacy stretches wide and deep. Zora Neale Hurston, a novelist, a folklorist, and an anthropologist, has inspired me for decades and has influenced the fictional stories of African-American and other women writers. I imagine her as a younger and beautiful gardenia sitting underneath a “shade tree” reading a book of Grimm’s Fairytales. And as an adult I imagine her gazing at a purple moon, pondering her next book, or maybe she’s in Haiti collecting folk tales for books of folklore. Regardless of my efforts towards imaginary grandeur, few descriptions transcend this one: “One of the greatest writers of our time,” said Pulitzer Prize winner and Nobel Prize for Literature winner Toni Morrison who’s a great writer by any literary standard. Words like incomparable, formidable, larger than life define Zora Neale Hurston. I call her a woman ahead of her time, a woman whose controversial life dwarfed alongside her literary lights.
When I heard about her novel two decades ago, I marched right into the local bookstore and inquired about a copy of Their Eyes Were Watching God. To my dismay, the bookseller clerk informed me that he’d never heard of her, and he was sure they didn’t carry an author named Zora Neale Hurston. “She’s the greatest writer of all times, and you don’t have a copy of her book?” I asked.
Thanks for a month of Sundays, sMichelle; I don't know what I'd do without your curious eyev for my blog, and your insatiable appetite for literary glory.
Wow, Joyce what an homage. I love ZNH, too, so much I named my first daughter after her. I'm sorry I'm just reading this, great post, sis!