Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co.; [Cambridge]: University Press, 1903.
“Sound and Double Consciousness” propelled us to think through the: “problem of the twentieth century…the color line” in sonic terms. We returned to this text in order to think about how DuBois’ spirituals included at the start of each chapter compliment or contrast from Hurston’s Vodou sheet music in Tell My Horse and Mules and Men. As stated in the syllabus, sound does not only mean music, but also includes “literature, speech, film, and recording technologies” (Jaji, 1). We also placed this text in dialogue with “How it Feels to be Colored Me”.
Hurston, Zora. “Hoodoo in America.” Journal of American Folklore, vol. 44, no. 171, 1931.
The opening of “Hoodoo in America” begins with the following statement: “Veaudeau is the European term for African magic practices and beliefs, but it is unknown to the American Negro. His own name for his practices is hoodoo, both terms being related to the West African term juju. “Conjure” is also freely used by the American Negro for these practices. In the Bahamas as on the West Coast of Africa the term is obeah. “Roots” is the Southern Negro’s term for folk-doctoring by herbs and prescriptions, and by extension, and because all hoodoo doctores cure by roots, it may be used as a synonym for hoodoo.” (22). As nascent scholars of Vodou and Hurston’s travels in New Orleans, we wanted to understand the differences between Hoodoo and Vodou (often confused both in hollywood cartoons and films (ex: Princess and the Frog, 2009). In 1928 Hurston moves to New Orleans to do research on hoodoo and conjure. She studies Marie Laveau, a hoodoo priestess. Hoodoo is also known as Lowcountry Voodoo in the Gullah South Carolina Lowcountry.
Hurston, Zora Neale. “How it Feels to be Colored Me.” The World Tomorrow, vol. 11, no. 5, 05, 1928, pp. 1-4.
In this short essay, Hurston sought to distinguish the category of “race” (used to describe sociocultural groups) from political and geographical category of “nation,” going so far as to challenge Du Bois’s influential account of African American identity. She writes with a high level of optimism and publishes this essay in 1928. Claude McKay publishes Home to Harlem that same year. Harlem is seen as a cultural home for the “New Negro” and in 1925, The New Negro Anthology is published by Alain Locke. This essay by Zora Neale Hurston illustrates her experiences as a Black American woman in the early 20th century in her hometown of Eatonville, an all black community in Florida. We chose to include this essay because it showcases Hurston’s writing style, humor, her personality, her attitudes, and most importantly the roots of her identity — all of which inform her work as an anthropologist, researching and documenting the lives of black people.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica. Harper Perennial, 1938.
This book chronicles Hurston’s travels in the Caribbean in the nations of Jamaica and Haiti. In Jamaica, she discusses societal issues like gender, while in Haiti she explores other cultural elements like Vodou. The end of the book includes songs and lyrics of traditional Haitian music with a mix of Creole and French orthography. Clearly this text is not the language of standard research. Her literary impulse is thinly disguised. In many ways her writing style disqualified her from being taken seriously as an academic, but this never seemed to be her goal. She wanted to change the popular perception of Vodou. Apparently, Hurston toyed with the idea of writing two different voodoo books, one for the anthropological world and one “‘for the way I want to write it”’.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Mules and Men, Amistad Publication, 1935.
Published in 1935, this book chronicles Hurston’s time in Eatonville, Florida. It is an important text for the canonization of Hurston in both American and African-American literature, and in developing fields such as ethnography and critical race theory. Hurston states,
“Folklore is not as easy to collect as it sounds. The best source is where there are the least outside influences and these people, being usually under-privileged, are the shyest. They are most reluctant at times to reveal that which the soul lives by. And the Negro, in spite of his openfaced laughter, his seeming acquiescence, is particularly evasive. You see we are a polite people and we do not say to our questioner, “Get out of here!” We smile and tell him or her something that satisfies the white person because, knowing so little about us, he doesn’t know what he is missing.” (2)
This quote is one example of the wall between African Americans and white people.
Hurston, Zora Neale. “Characteristics of Negro Expression“, 1934. Within the Circle: An Anthology of African American Literary Criticism from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present, Angelyn Mitchell.
Hurston describes daily life within the black communities as filled with performative acts. Black art forms, at this time, were rarely confined to the print text. We used this essay to help guide our understanding of the sonic and questioned the categories that she lays out for Negro expression. It is a good piece to be critical of her approach and to use to explore her other works.
McKay, Claude. Banjo, 1929
Published in 1929, Banjo is the sequel to McKay’s, Home to Harlem (1928) which explored the lives of migrants coming from colonial or recently decolonized societies. It makes sense that McKay and Hurston interacted during this time period, as dialogues around black transnationalism, nationalism, migration, and music were rich during the Harlem Renaissance. Claude McKay increasingly moved further left in his politics with the NAACP and DuBois.
Locke, Alaine The New Negro Anthology, 1925
This anthology edited by Alaine Locke, includes work of some of the most talented writers of the Harlem Renaissance such as Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston. It includes fiction, poetry, and essays on African and African-American literature. During this time, writers are sought to define an authentic African-American identity. Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes and others debated the origins and meanings of black dialect.
