“I have been in Sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and a sword in my hands.”

This audiobook performed by Bahni Turpin was great. Zora is a fantastic storyteller, the kind that grips your attention from the first word to the last and it was a wonderful to be immersed in her words as Turpin narrated of her life, from her beginnings as a precocious child in Eatonville, Florida to her work towards funding her way to school and the adventures she had in the process, to then school and later her work as an anthropologist and researcher, and as an artist and novelist. ( )

Her father was the mayor and also a minister. Her mother, a school teacher died while Zora was young and her father quickly remarried. Zora and her stepmother didn’t get along so Zora found herself cast off and very independent from her mid teen years.

She had a series of dream visions foretelling her future. At many points in her life, she was able to confirm what was occurring by one of these foretellings.

She began her career as an anthropologist, collecting black folk tales and songs from the south.

Fiercely independent, with an absolute gift for laugh out loud funny, but often acerbic words: (“My grandmother glared at me like open-faced hell and snorted: I vominates a lying tongue.”)

This memoir was written in 1942 when she was at the top of her game as a writer, and a leader in the Harlem Renaissance.

Besides the memoir, there are three of her essays, including her thoughts on being a ‘race man’. I cannot but wonder if some of these thoughts led to her eventual obscurity in a time when blacks were eager to claim their rightful place after centuries of being treated as lesser.

“Light came to me when I realized that I did not have to consider any racial group as a whole. God made them duck by duck and that was the only way I could see them. I learned that skins were no measure of what was inside people. So none of the Race cliché meant anything anymore. I began to laugh at both white and black who claimed special blessings on the basis of race. Therefore I saw no curse in being black, nor no extra flavor by being white."

Highly recommended. I will be reading more by Zora Neale Hurston. ( )

Sometimes the author goes on extended tangents into a particular narrow topic that lost me. However, her humor and often biting, unapologetic views make up for it. ( )

I so loved Their Eyes Were Watching God that I was enthusiastic about reading the author's memoir. The first half of the book was stimulating and told the story of her early life well. I will say only that after that it was a struggle to hold my interest. However, there is much to consider and her writings and musings on religion, friendship and race were informative. I will be interested to hear from younger readers who have recently embraced ZNH. I captured a lot of quotes that I know will stick with me. One of my favorites for its humor is her commentary on reading trash sometimes rather than all erudite works.
I do not regret the trash. It has harmed me in no way. It was a help, because acquiring the reading habit early is the important thing. Taste and natural development will take care of the rest later on. ( )

This pioneer was lost (really lost, in an unmarked grave) and then found by Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple. Writer, anthropologist, domestic worker, and sharp observer of relations between the races and genders in the '30s - 50's, she is best known for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston was also inclined to strong narratives about heterosexual relationships, as influenced by her non-affectionate mother, who died when she was only nine; a bitter physical war with her stepmother; and her two ex-husbands. Also included in this memoir are three essays that define her stance on "race men" - she did not believe that any race should ever be judged as a single entity, but only as individuals. Hurston was also a non-believer, putting her at great odds with her community of Eatonville, FL, the only incorporated all-Black town in the country. Her stirring writings on "My People! My People!" will be puzzling to modern readers, who will be surprised at her seeming lack of interest in social justice and in reparations. Fore and afterwords by Maya Angelou and Henry Gates Jr provide context but do not make excuses for Hurston's courting of wealthy white patrons. Hurston is a folk writer in two senses of the word - she writes beautifully and understands "common" folk and speaks so evocatively in the vernacular of working class and poor people. Her loss of literati favor and her eventual obscurity are painful to discover, as surely it was for Hurston, perhaps due to falling out of favor with the white editors who helped her get started, and to her disagreements with other Black writers such as Langston Hughes and Richard Wright. This is as strong a coming-of-age story as has ever been told.

Quotes: “My grandmother glared at me like open-faced hell and snorted: I vominates a lying tongue.”

“There is an age when children are fit company for spirits. Before they have absorbed too many of earthly things to be able to fly with the unseen things that soar.”

“Rome, the eternal city, meant two different things to my parents. To Mama, it meant you must build it today so it could last through eternity. To Papa, it meant that you could plan to lay some bricks today and you have the rest of eternity to finish it. With all time, why hurry? God had made more time than anything else, anyway. Why act so stingy about it?”

“You cannot have knowledge and worship at the same time. Mystery is the essence of the divine. Gods must keep their distance from men.”

“I was careful to do my classwork. I felt the ladder under my feet.”

“It is one of the tragedies of life that one cannot have all the wisdom one is ever to possess in the beginning. “

“There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.”

“Niagara Falls was just like watching the ocean jump off Pike’s Peak.” ( )