Go Gator and Muddy the Water: Writings by Zora Neale Hurston from the Federal Writers Project - Hardcover

The writings of distinguished African-American Harlem Renaissance author, folklorist, playwright and anthropologist Hurston during her tenure (1938-39) in the Florida division of the Federal Writers Project, many of them previously unpublished, are collected here. They are augmented by Bordelon's biographical essay about Hurston's life during the year she participated in the project, and by her analysis and commentary. The FWP, a federally funded relief program that provided impoverished writers with employment, offered Hurston the lowliest position of "relief reporter," a title for which she was clearly overqualified. But Hurston, just three generations away from slavery, was accustomed to discrimination in a South where Jim Crow laws were still staunchly upheld. As a reporter for the FWP she was assigned to write 1500 words per week describing the lore of African-American Floridians, as part of a larger project, which was never realized and which, moreover, deleted most of Hurston's contributions from the manuscript-in-progress. Other work she submitted for the FWP was often ignored or heavily edited; a few pieces were included in an automotive guidebook, Florida. Included here are Hurston's transcriptions of African-American oral history: traditions, habits, folklore, lyrics and dances; as well as photographs of Hurston and associates, and her performance pieces and essays. Her notable observations on race, writing, her hometown and the upward mobility of blacks in her time are now invaluable historical resources. For Hurston fans, especially scholars, this book will offer a fuller picture of the writer's lesser-known literary endeavors.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

paper 0-393-31813-3 New work by Hurston (18891968), the Harlem Renaissance writer and folklorist. (Hurstons first collection of folklore, Mules and Men, is generally considered the first such compilation by an African-American. It was followed by Tell My Horse.) During the Depression, like many writers, Hurston went to work for the Works Progress Administration. As part of the Florida Federal Writers Project, she compiled this collection of folklore, parts of which have never been published before. Bordelon, an independent scholar who recovered the manuscript while researching the FWP, contributes a biographical essay on Hurston that focuses in particular on her years with the FWP. In her proposal, reprinted here, Hurston divides Florida into four areas, with different economic, social, and cultural factors influencing local folklore, including black folk religion. Folklore is the boiled- down juice of human living, she writes. Folklore in Florida is still in the making. Folk tunes, tales, and characters are still emerging from the lush place of primitive imagination before they can be finally drained by formal education and mechanical inversions. This volume represents part of Hurstons effort to capture that critical momoent in the development of black folklore, which included the creation of a new prison folk hero, Daddy Mention. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.