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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Humor / General; Drama / General; Drama / American; Humor / General; Humor / Form / Comic Strips ... Read more

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In What We Say, Who We Are: Leopold Senghor, Zora Neale Hurston, and the Philosophy of Language, Parker English explores the commonality between Leopold Senghor's concept of 'negritude' and Zora Neale Hurston's view of 'Negro expression.' For English, these two concepts emphasize that a person's view of herself is above all dictated by the way in which she talks about herself. Focusing on what he identifies as 'performism,' English discusses the presentational/representational and externalistic/internalistic facets of 'performism' as they relate to the ideas of Senghor and Hurston. English ends his work by closely examining Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God in light of his discussion of 'performism,' and draws new, intriguing conclusions about the extent to which Hurston's main character exemplifies W.E.B. DuBois's concept of double-consciousness. What We Say, Who We Are will certainly pique the interest of scholars interested in Africana studies, African-American literature, and the philosophy of language. ... Read more

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This is a literary critical study of the forms of intimacy within a marginalized and stigmatized social group. The author describes the process of ridicule, exclusion, destitution, imprisonment, and rhetorical silencing in an historical period when spirited change was in the air. Though this book does not neglect the resisting black men (many of whom were homosexual), it concentrates on the humiliated and dominated black women. ... Read more

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Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) is one of 20th-century America's foremost fiction and folklore writers. Though she was criticized by some of her contemporaries, including Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, her works are now frequently taught in literature courses and are widely admired for their style and substance. This reference book is a comprehensive guide to the large body of work written about her in the last 75 years. Included are annotated entries for books, dissertations, and theses written about Hurston's life and literary career. The volume also looks at hundreds of articles, book chapters, conference papers, reviews, children's books, and web sites. The bibliography additionally points the reader to guides and biographical sources and to anthologies where her works are collected. Finally, an exhaustive list of works by Hurston is provided, along with a catalog of the special collections where her manuscripts, correspondence, and ephemera are stored. ... Read more

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Filtered through black womanist perspectives, Zora NealeHurston: The Breath of Her Voice breaks new ground through innovationand imagination, by fusing interpretive methods in ethnographicwriting and literary studies. Intrinsically referencing contemporaryepistemological issues in ethnographic writing and literarycanonicity, Dr. Karanja illuminates fragments of Hurston's lifethrough an exploration of her novels and folklore collections. Indoing so, she bridges disciplines to construct a postmodern text that"speaks" directly and formidably to oral literature and to thewriter's and reader's collaboration in the production of textualmeanings. ... Read more

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Meditations on the Life of a Legend
Just when it seems that every possible scholastic measure has been exercised to determine the depth and breadth of Zora Neale Hurston's wit, her exceptional imagination and intense preoccupation with the variednuances of African American culture, there comes along a new stroke ofgenius that provides an end of the 20th century punctuation mark on themore than half a century of Zora phobia.The newest of these is AyanaKaranja's handiwork Zora Neale Hurston the Breath of Her Voice (Peter LangPublishers).It is an absolutely captivating and engaging meditation onthe life of a legend whom we have all come to love as Zora.The bookcomprises an interesting admixture of scholastic and literary forms andprobings, including direct and indirect narratives and poetry.It beckonsZora's presence to its pages.This work is not a recycling of previousliterary efforts on Hurston nor does it bear much of the jargon that wehave come to expect from current and past research on this HarlemRenaissance figure.

Karanja exhibits a strong connection with Hurston'sspirit as translated through the now legendary pages of her works.In thisregard Karanja suggests:

"Hurston pushed the boundaries ofethnographic writing in a fashion similar to ethnographers who arenow referred to as postmodernist anthropologists (those whochallenge conventional forms of ethnographic writing and whodemonstrate unconventionaldiscursive practices)." ... Read more

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This book explores the ways in which the American writers Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and Zora Neale Hurston used modernist primitivism to assert a uniquely American literary identity in the face of European cultural hegemony.

The extended Introduction traces the history of primitivism from a classical rhetorical trope to its emergence in the twentieth century as aesthetic, exemplified by Picasso and his use of African masks, that combined new work in the human sciences especially anthropology and psychology, with new ideas in the visual arts to challenge traditional ideas of realism and artistic accomplishment.The first two chapters bring together visual evidence, published and unpublished writings, and linguistic theory to give the first detailed account of the theoretical and gender concerns of the Stein-Picasso collaboration, which culminated in Picasso's Les demoiselles d'Avignon and Stein's "Melanctha".

In the final two chapters, the author shows how both Hemingway and Hurston participated in the racialist scientific debates of the 1920s and used primitivism to find their respective artistic voices:Hemingway in his use of American Indians in recasting his life narratives in the Nick Adams stories, and Hurston in her attempts to use her anthropological training to construct a mythic African-American past. ... Read more

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Profiles Zora Neale Hurston, whose childhood love of stories led her to a successful career as a folklorist and author of poems, novels, short stories, and plays. ... Read more