Editorial Content for You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
This new collection of writings from Black author, scholar and cultural critic Zora Neale Hurston will introduce her to a new generation and give her the honor due --- honor that was sometimes sparse in her lifetime --- for her brilliant observations and deeply considered opinions.
Introduced by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Genevieve West, both of whom diligently organized and annotated these 50 essays, YOU DON’T KNOW US NEGROES contains a small number of never-before published pieces, along with many that will be familiar to Hurston’s followers.
"Bringing Zora Neale Hurston to life again in this vibrant aggregation, Gates and West provide a laudable service to all of us."
Hurston was born in 1891 and lived to see the nascent era of civil rights, which included the Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education, the impetus for school integration. Considering this legal landmark, Hurston expressed the views that made her less than popular among liberal Blacks, as she always stressed the power of the individual over that of the state or the dominant race. In an essay entitled “Court Order Can’t Make Races Mix,” she insists that if there are adequate Black schools and they are supported adequately, then integration offers “nothing different than the presence of white people.”
The sole Black student at prestigious Barnard College, Hurston was a folklorist, ethnographer, cultural anthropologist and the author of four novels. She urged her fellow Blacks to rise up and above the prejudices and ill treatment they experienced. In “My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience,” she recalls a visit to a physician “in New York instead of the South.” At the behest of her white benefactor after she returned from the Bahamas with a digestive illness, Hurston went to a swanky doctor’s office where she was shunted to a “waiting room” that bore a striking resemblance to a linen closet and given hasty, desultory treatment by the doctor.
Such vignettes, allied with Hurston’s refusal to accept white superiority, no matter how cleverly described by politicians and even those of her own race (such as members of the NAACP), make her strong will and character plain. Her writing deftly intertwined Black speech and the erudition of her academic studies, giving her words great motive power, as when she declared that, at times, “I have no race. I am me.”
Bringing Zora Neale Hurston to life again in this vibrant aggregation, Gates and West provide a laudable service to all of us. It is impossible to read Hurston’s words without recognizing not only her true genius but also her sincere embrace of her race, along with her love for her country and its best --- if not always best enacted --- ideals.
Teaser
YOU DON'T KNOW US NEGROES is the quintessential gathering of provocative essays from one of the world’s most celebrated writers, Zora Neale Hurston. Spanning more than three decades and penned during the backdrop of the birth of the Harlem Renaissance, Montgomery bus boycott, desegregation of the military and school integration, Hurston’s writing articulates the beauty and authenticity of Black life as only she could. Collectively, these essays showcase the roles that enslavement and Jim Crow have played in intensifying Black people’s inner lives and culture rather than destroying it.
Promo
YOU DON'T KNOW US NEGROES is the quintessential gathering of provocative essays from one of the world’s most celebrated writers, Zora Neale Hurston. Spanning more than three decades and penned during the backdrop of the birth of the Harlem Renaissance, Montgomery bus boycott, desegregation of the military and school integration, Hurston’s writing articulates the beauty and authenticity of Black life as only she could. Collectively, these essays showcase the roles that enslavement and Jim Crow have played in intensifying Black people’s inner lives and culture rather than destroying it.
About the Book
Spanning more than 35 years of work, the first comprehensive collection of essays, criticism and articles by the legendary author of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston, showcasing the evolution of her distinctive style as an archivist and author.
YOU DON'T KNOW US NEGROES is the quintessential gathering of provocative essays from one of the world’s most celebrated writers, Zora Neale Hurston. Spanning more than three decades and penned during the backdrop of the birth of the Harlem Renaissance, Montgomery bus boycott, desegregation of the military and school integration, Hurston’s writing articulates the beauty and authenticity of Black life as only she could.
Collectively, these essays showcase the roles that enslavement and Jim Crow have played in intensifying Black people’s inner lives and culture rather than destroying it. She argues that in the process of surviving, Black people re-interpreted every aspect of American culture --- "modif[ying] the language, mode of food preparation, practice of medicine, and most certainly religion.” White supremacy prevents the world from seeing or completely recognizing Black people in their full humanity, and Hurston made it her job to lift the veil and reveal the heart and soul of the race.
These pages reflect Hurston as the controversial figure she was --- someone who stated that feminism is a mirage and that the integration of schools did not necessarily improve the education of Black students. Also covered is the sensational trial of Ruby McCollum, a wealthy Black woman convicted in 1952 for killing her lover, a white doctor.
Demonstrating the breadth of this revered and influential writer’s work, YOU DON'T KNOW US NEGROES AND OTHER ESSAYS is an invaluable chronicle of a writer’s development and a window into her world and mind.
Audiobook available, read by Robin Miles
