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Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God highlights the vitality of African American culture. This casebook demonstrates how African Americans fashioned themselves individually and collectively to combat racism, classism, and sexism. With provocative documents that contextualize the complex issues of the novel, Lester provides an excellent resource for students and teachers first approaching the excitement and cultural flavor that define Hurston's novels. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Understanding Zora Neale Hurstong's Their Eyes Were Watching God: A student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Document
This book has some very useful essays that raise questions regarding the issues raised by the story. The essays are interesting to read. At the end of each section there are reference materalsi for further study as well as discussion questions. It is useful as a resource and background information for the novel. ... Read more

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Hoodoo Medicine is a unique record of nearly lostAfrican-American folk culture. It documents herbal medicines used forcenturies, from the 1600s until recent decades, by the slaves andlater their freed descendants, in the South Carolina Sea Islands. TheSeas Island people, also called the Gullah, were unusually isolatedfrom other slave groups by the creeks and marshes of the LowCountry. They maintained strong African influences on their speech,social customs, and beliefs, long after other American blacks had lostthis connection. Likewise, their folk medicine mixed medicines thatoriginated in Africa with cures learned from the American Indians andEuropean settlers.Hoodoo Medicine is a window into Gullahtraditions, which in recent years have been threatened by themigration of families, the invasion of the Sea Islands by suburbandevelopers, and the gradual death of the elder generation. More thanthat, it captures folk practices that lasted longer in the Sea Islandsthan elsewhere, but were once widespread throughout African-Americancommunities of the South. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Great Resource Book
Hoodoo Medicine: Gullah Herbal Remedies, Revised Edition is an excellent book and very well written and very easy to read and understand. I was amazed at all of the folk ways I was not aware of.

Hoodoo Medicine:Gullah Herbal Remedies
Very interesting insight into early coastal life in S.C.& Ga.Blacks and Native Americans enteract and exchange information on many possible uses of natural herbs,plants and trees as treatments for a wide variety of physical aliments.Early European settlers adopted many of these treatments for their use.Overall,a well done short read and reference book.

A Unique Record of a Nearly Lost Healing Tradition
A Unique Record of a Nearly Lost Healing Tradition

Reviewed by William Courson

The Sea Islands of the southeastern Atlantic coast are renownfor their tropical beauty and for the Gullah people, African-Americans descended from enslaved ancestors who developed a distinctive language and culture. Cut off from the mainland, many of the islands were accessible only by boat as late as 1960, permitting Gullah culture to remain largely intact.Dr. Faith Mitchell, a medical anthropologist and former Clinton White House policy analyst, lived with the Gullah people for a period beginning in 1971 to learn for herself the traditional system ofmedicine still practiced by the islands' oldest residents, a knowledge that had nearly been lost and an experience she describes as `life-changing.'

"Hoodoo Medicine: Gullah Herbal Remedies" describes in detail the medicinal plants historically used by the Gullah people.The book includes a history in summary form of the Sea Islands, their settlement and the sources for this lineage of African-American traditional ("folk") medicine, as well as an exhaustive listing of all the medicinal roots, herbs and other plant materials, elaborating their applications in the Gullah culture as well as borrowings by Native Americans and European settlers.

This work captures traditional healing practices that have lasted far longer in the Sea Islands than elsewhere, but were once widespread throughout African-American communities of the South.

Shocked by the poverty and lack of any modern infrastructure in the more remote backwoods settlements, the author found a place where very little had changed since the days of slavery. She was most affected by the rich, fertile beauty of the Islands and by the strength and integrity of the families she encountered, possessing a natural wealth and deep wisdom that belied the widespread material impoverishment. At the same time, she discovered that the Sea Islands were also as abundant in culture - ghost stories, animal tales, the Gullah language, plant knowledge - as they were in animal and plant life.

These first experiences among the Gullah people led her to pursue a lifelong interest in African American history and culture.

"Hoodoo Medicine: Gullah Herbal Remedies" is a unique record of a nearly lost realm of African-American folk culture. It documents plant medicines used since the 1600s down to the present day, by the slaves and later their freed descendants. The Gullah healing tradition is one that has wed techniques and materials that originated in Africa with cures learned from the itinerant Moors, Native Americans and Europeans.

This book is a window into the Gullah tradition, threatened in recent years by the migration of families, the invasion of suburban developers, and the passing of the elder generation. The healing traditions of the African American herbalists have been largely overlooked, called backwards or adaptations of other traditions, and Dr. Mitchell systemically and effectively refutes such claims.

"Hoodoo Medicine" belongs in the library of anyone interested in African American history generally and its healing traditions in particular as well as of anyone interested in traditional or alternative healing and herbalism.

This is a valuable book, beautifully and lovingly written, that is inspirational in its effort to revitalize an important andnearly lost piece of history.

Nothing about hoodoo medicine here
I really wanted to like this book. My ancestors are from Georgetown District, S.C., the center of Gullah culture; I have studied Southern folk remedies for many years; and I like the people.

Sigh. "Hoodoo Medicine" is twaddle and thin twaddle at that.

Mitchell claims to be a medical anthropologist, which on the evidence of this book is hard to believe. Anyway, she did some field work, evidently on Wadmalaw Island, in 1974. She took a few muddy photographs and collected information about how the people used plants, some native, some alien, but few of them part of their ancestral, mostly West African culture.

So far, so good. After a brief introduction to the Sea Islands and a shallow explication of what "Gullah" is, she lists a few score medicinal "herbs,' although botanically many are not herbs, something a medical anthropologist ought to distinguish, you would think.

It would have been wonderful if she had described how some, or even one, of her informants made diagnoses, gathered her roots and dispensed her cures. Not a word of that is here. You can find such information in Julia Peterkin's stories of Sandy Island (the novels "Scarlet Sister Mary," "Black April" and "Bright Skin" and the stories collected as "Green Thursday," all enthusiastically recommended), but not here.

Instead, we have a brief description of several plants, with line drawings that will not help to identify them in the field, with descriptions of uses derived from standard works. None of these plants will cure or even ameliorate any of the diseases they are listed for, and several of them can kill you, but Mitchell flags only one of these, jimson weed.

Even the title is a con. Mitchell distinguishes three kinds of use of plants: folk remedies, "occult" (hoodoo or witch medicine) and spiritual cures. The book, so far as it is about anything, is about folk remedies. It has nothing to do with hoodoo medicine. No doubt a title like "Field Guide to Folk Remedies of the Sea Islands" was less catchy.

Ground Breaking Study
The healing traditions of African American herbalists have been largely overlooked, called backwards or adaptations of other traditions.Faith Mitchell systemically refutes these claims in her concise overview of our ways of working herbs."Hoodoo Medicine" belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in African American healing or multicultural herbalism.Though written several years ago, Mitchell's lovely book remains a powerful and inspirational affirmation of African wisdom in the New World. ... Read more

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THE SIX FOOLS

Zora Neale Hurston

Who's the biggest fool?

Is it the girl who floods her basement with cider, the man who jumps into his pants, the farmer who feeds his cow on the roof, or the woman who tries to fill her wheelbarrow with sunshine?

Based on a story collected by Zora Neale Hurston during her travels in 1930s Gulf States, The Six Fools is an outrageously funny tale about a dashing young man who finds foolish folks aplenty and true love!

Customer Reviews (2)

Enjoyable!
We picked up The Six Fools at the Library as part of our ongoing study of myth, folklore and legends...it's one of the few African American stories that my branch of the library has on the shelf and I'm glad I did.Here we have the story of a young man who becomes engaged and discovers that his fiancé and her parents are fools and so he decides that he's going to go out into the world and if he can find three fools bigger than them, he'll return to marry the daughter.The Six Fools is one of those rather surreal tales that doesn't really make much sense, but are a joy to read...filled with humor and images that will entertain children and adults alike.Does our young man find three fools and return to marry the girl...but of course, the world is full of fools, but you'll have to read to find out exactly how foolish the people he encounters are!A joy to read for adults and kids alike, I give The Six Fools four stars, both the text and the illustrations work well tighter in this story, recommended!

The Six Fools
The Six Fools is a story/folk tale collected by Zora Neal Hurston.

This tale interweaves the surrealism of African Folklore and Hurston's abstract style for a story that is full of enchantment all the while set to the tone of a children's book.

The story is creatively spun with Hurston's unique fashion and use of rich dialect.Encouraging the audience to be drawn in at the conflict of the story, which entails the protagonist confronting his future `family to be' with a challenge.He informs them that in order to marry their daughter, he must make a journey in order to find three additional "fools" as big as they.The tale continues and ends with magical word play and wonderful imagery.

Ms. Thomas has skillfully adapted/translated this tale to a comprehensive yet comical story for children.The illustrations by Ms. Tanksley are vibrant, colorful miniature works of art that can tell a story without dialogue.

Eleanor S. Shields, Black Butterfly Review
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Do you dare to cross paths with ...

An enchantress who can slip in and out of her skin, A man more evil than the devil, A skull who talks back, A pair of creepy feet that can walk on their own?

Spooky, chilling, and fantastical, this collection of six scary tales will send shivers up your spine!

The stories in the skull talks back have been selected from Every Tongue Got To Confess, Zora Neale Hurston's third volume of folklore. Through Joyce Carol Thomas's carefully adapted text and Leonard Jenkins's arresting illustrations, the soulful, fanciful imaginations of ordinary folk will reach readers of all ages. ... Read more

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The three bad witches are HUNGRY! "Let's eat these children," they say. They may have teeth that are longer than their lips and they may wear high heels, but they are NO match for two smart children, their brave grandma, three hound dogs, and a fast-running snake.

Customer Reviews (2)

The Three Witches...Just Doesn't Work for Me
I was excited when I saw this book at the library and checked it out without hesitation because I'm always excited to read folklore, legend and mythology (original or re-versioned), but this that's about as far as the excitement got for me.The cover art is cool, quite vibrant and just the right mix of scary/silly for the age range this book is aimed at...but the artwork inside just doesn't do anything for me...it's rather flat and two dimensional, it has no depth.The only thing it really has going for it is that it's quite vibrant and lively in the authors choice of color...there just isn't any dimension to it and that takes away from the story for me.

The story itself is ok, but not great.I found it difficult to tell who is speaking when and how it should be read aloud...I had to read it myself twice and then once out loud before I got a sense of how best to read it to my kids.I don't mind working hard to get something right, but this just didn't work for me.I give it a C+, it's a great idea...but the execution just doesn't work for me. Most of all I get the sense that this would work best in a larger group reading (rehearsed ahead of time) where you could get a couple of children to read the brother and sisters parts with a narrative story teller doing the rest (all at the same time), I think it would build better to climax and be more engaging for the listeners.I should like to try that sometime and see if The Three Witches is more fun that way!

Kids love Folklore, Zora resurrected
As an lower elemtary reading teacher and huge Zora Neale Hurston fan I was thrilled to find this book. Beautifully illustrated and written to be shared out loud, this book is a great asset to any reading program which tries to turn kids on to the joy of our literature. Hurston was one of the greatest folklore collectors of the last century and a magnificent personality. Introducing her to young children comes not a moment too soon.This story is fun to use when discussing folklore motifs that can be traced in other great books, like Wiley and the Hairy Man. I hope there are more like this to come. ... Read more

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"The Inside Light": New Critical Essays on Zora Neale Hurston caps a decade of resurgent popularity and critical interest in Hurston to offer the most insightful critical analysis of her work to date. Encompassing all of Hurston's writings—fiction, folklore manuscripts, drama, correspondence—it fully reaffirms the legacy of this phenomenal writer, whom The Color Purple's Alice Walker called "A Genius of the South."

"The Inside Light" offers 20 critical essays covering the breadth of Hurston's writing, including her poetry, which up to now has received little attention. Essays throughout are informed by revealing new research, previously unseen manuscripts, and even film clips of Hurston. The book also focuses on aspects of Hurston's life and work that remain controversial, including her stance on desegregation, her relationships with Charlotte Mason, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright, and the veracity of her autobiography, Dust Tracks On a Road.

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This reveals the ways Hurston circumvented the constraints of the white publishing world and a predominantly white readership to critique white culture and its effects on the black community. ... Read more

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"With the publication of this text, Karla Holloway becomes the first to produce a book-length analysis of Hurston's use of language in her four major novels. . . . Holloway supports all of her contentions by combining studies of African and Afro-American culture with Euramerican critical theories of semiology and structuralism. The result is a fascinating study of the shifting language of the narrators in each of Hurston's novels, and how these shifts relate to the emotional states of the characters and to the novelist herself." Choice ... Read more

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During the last half of the twentieth century, a group of historically neglected but extremely powerful voices has emerged from the African American literary tradition.The voices of African American women have gathered strength from the suppressed tongues of their foremothers to provide insight into the history, psyche, and spirit of the African American woman.Professor Johnson examines the narrative strategies, with particular emphasis on the authorial and narrative voices, of three texts written by African American women: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and The Color Purple by Alice Walker. ... Read more

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The rediscovery of Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, first published in 1937 but subsequently out-of-print for decades, marks one of the most dramatic chapters in African-American literature and Women's Studies. Its popularity owes much to the lyricism of the prose, the pitch-perfect rendition of black vernacular English, and the memorable characters--most notably, Janie Crawford. Collecting the most widely cited and influential essays published on Hurston's classic novel over the last quarter century, this Casebook presents contesting viewpoints by Hazel Carby, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Barbara Johnson, Carla Kaplan, Daphne Lamothe, Mary Helen Washington, and Sherley Anne Williams. The volume also includes a statement Hurston submitted to a reference book on twentieth-century authors in 1942. As it records the major debates the novel has sparked on issues of language and identity, feminism and racial politics, A Casebook affirms the classic status of the novel and charts new directions for future critics. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

the great detail and diction used added to the great story.
this story through the use of the negro language,provided an entertaining stor ... Read more

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This fully edited volume contains nine of Zora Neale Hurston's unpublished plays at the Library of Congress, including three of her full-length plays: Polk County, Cold Keener and De Turkey and De Law. This book is expected be a major contribution to American literary scholarship as it portrays customary African American life in the 20th century through a highly nonconformist African American lens. Zora Neale Hurston is a world-renowned author, best known for her fiction and folklore, including her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and her autobiography, Dust Tracks on the Road (1942). ... Read more

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This study explores a new understanding of modernism and ethnicity as put forward in the transnational and diasporic writings of Ania Yezierska, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jean Rhys. In its selection of three modernists from apparently different cultural backgrounds, it is meant to make us rethink the role of modernism in terms of ethnicity and displacement. Konzett critiques the traditional understanding of the monocultural “ethnic identity” often highlighted in the studies of these writers and argues that all three writers are better understood as ironic narrators of diaspora and movement and as avant-garde modernists. As a result, they offer an alternative aesthetics of modernism, which is centered around the innovative narration of displacement. Her analysis of the complexities of language and form and impact of the complex and ambiguous formal styles of the three writers on the history of their reception is a model of the effective integration of formalist, historicist, and theoretical perspectives in literary criticism.
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Updated from its original version with an introduction by Ntozake Shange, Wild Women and Books is a celebration of perhaps the move revered and radical women writers of history. Beginning with the first recorded writer of either gender, Enheduanna of Sumeria, and ending with acclaimed authors of today, including Toni Morrison and J.K. Rowling, this is a must-read for those who must read.Brenda Knight brings more than one hundred female authors to life for today's readers. She makes their tumultuous and admirable paths to literary expression easily accessible in chapters such as Literary First Ladies; Ink in Their Veins; Banned, Blacklisted, and Arrested; and Women Whose Books Are Loved Too Much.

From religious transcribers and political dissidents to erotic playwrights and romantic poets, no subject or literary form is left untouched. In honor of those women whose pens persevered, and proved that the female voice is brilliant, we invite you to listen. ... Read more