Cover Image: You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays

You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays

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Member Reviews

I love zora neale hurston. Everything she writes brings insight and wit, and a sharp humour. These essays were well written, edited and lived up to the wit and insight we know of Zora.

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This is a truly fascinating collection of essays, which shed great light upon this truly important author. It is not a book to read in one sitting, but to dip into and read a piece from. You will learn a great deal, gain insights into the world as seen through the eyes of Zora Neale Hurston, and feel like you've spent time at her feet, just listening.

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Classic and utterly passionate, and readabke, she is a contrarian who would balk at current easy critiques of racism... she's totally to be reckoned with ..

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This series of essays explores all aspects of African American culture; Music, religion, food folklore, education, relationships, and education. These essays explore life before stepping on the slave ship, life as a slave, and ultimately adapting and adhering to life in a culture forced upon them. This book explores how the cultures are different and separate, and also how they have become entwined. From snippets of interviews with the last know slave, to the most educated amongst us, these essays attempt to cover all parts of the African American culture, all the nuances, finer details, and where they originate from...Read it, if you want to know us Negroes

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This is the first time that nearly all of Zora Neale Hurston’s work has been collected together and is a great introduction to those like myself who were unaware of her importance within black cultural circles of the time. However, there are some parts of the manuscripts that are missing as they were lost when ‘staff at the nursing home in which she died began burning her belongings’. She wrote during the 30’s ,40’s and up to the ‘50’s and was a playwright, novelist and journalist. Zora was also a mover and shaker and worked with several significant figures in such as the poet Langston Hughes.
The collection covers 35 years of her work and contains, essays, criticisms and articles and the odd strange piece such as ‘Noses.’ She covers many themes: politics, racism, gender and the emerging Civil Rights Movement amongst others in a strong, clear voice. Zora was not afraid to speak her mind even if it went against the prevailing view. For example, when the desegregation of schools was being applauded, she merely said, ‘“How much satisfaction can I get from a court order for somebody to associate with me who does not wish me near them?” In the introduction to the book, her editors say that she felt strongly that integrated education wasn’t always good for black people.
One of the pieces that really stood out for me was ‘The Last Slave Ship’ in which she interviewed a 95 year old man in 1935 who had come into the USA on the last slave ship, in a cargo of ‘black ivory’ as it was described, the Cothilda. It was a piece of oral history as he described how he was captured, the destruction of his village in Africa, the his journey to the US and his life afterwards. I think what impressed me the most was that he was the last living member of his people, the Takkoi, as everyone else in the tribe had died. How must he have felt?
Hurston’s work also comments on the emergence of jazz and blues as a way of articulating the black experience and I wonder what she would make of the creativity and exuberance of rap and hip-hop, two of the most dominant forces in music today.
Another impressive essay was ‘I have seen Negro votes being peddled’ in which black votes were being bought off quite blatantly with gifts such as sheets and towels. She also saw the black person as ‘victim’ label as another and more insidious form of racism. In addition, she criticises colleges for black people that don’t educate anyone and always have the begging bowl out. In ‘My most humiliating Jim Crow Experience’ she recounts visiting a doctor and is examined in which appears to be a side room where they throw their unwashed laundry. She sails out saying airily that she will send a cheque but knows very well that she won’t.
The editors, Henry Louis Gates Jr and Genevieve West have done a sterling job. They also wrote the excellent introduction. But the latter half of the book is concerned with a notorious murder case in 1952. It was the Ruby McCollum case in Little Oak, Florida. A decade earlier a 15 year old black youth had been lynched in Little Oak for sending Christmas cards to co-workers including a white girl. Ruby was an affluent married African American woman who had shot a prominent white doctor and senator 4 times in the back. It was an all white, all male jury as black people were disenfranchised and so could not serve on juries. There was probably a KKK member in the audience as well. Rose and the doctor had been having an affair for years and he had fathered one of her children and she was pregnant again. Sam, her husband, was involved in illegal gambling and died of a heart attack the day after she was arrested. It was expected to be an open and shut case as Ruby was bound for the electric chair. A defence witness was not allowed to speak and Ruby was also denied her chance. Zora’s mounting horror at Judge Adams denying Ruby her chance to speak is shocking. It’s a disturbing read as the murder was assumed to be about a medical bill of $116 which would not have been a problem to someone like Ruby but other facts have come to light since. Zora sensed this in her reports especially from anonymous comments from the local black community who spoke to her. Ruby ended up in the state hospital until she was released in 1974 and died in 1992 still stating that she couldn’t remember the shooting at all.

However, like another reviewer I would have liked dates and publications details beside each entry instead of having to go through the admittedly comprehensive end notes.

This was a great opportunity to discover an author who was new to me with a powerful and authentic voice and not afraid to use it.
My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC.

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This is an anthology of Zora Neale Hurston's work, categorised into different themes.

I recently read Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, and completely fell in love with the book, so having the opportunity to read this was exciting for me.

There is such a range of content in this book, and Zora Neale Hurston's writing shines through in every single piece.

As an anthology, I wouldn't recommend this book as the type of book you read in one go, but the different themes helped me to digest everything.

Zora Neale Hurston's writing to me is flawless and so so many of the essays in this book, written so long ago, are still poignant and piercing and relevant today. I can't wait to own a physical copy of this book, as it's something I want to keep coming back to.

My rating of this anthology is 4 stars, not because of Hurston's writing, but because I think perhaps this book is not the most impactful way of experiencing her writing.

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This is not an easy book but it's a fascinating one, one of those book you have to read one chapter at a time as there's plenty of food for thought.
It made me discover Zora Neale Hurston and I appreciated her works and the introduction.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

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An important collection of Hurston's poignant and thought-provoking essays that explore an array of topics in both a delicate and bold manner/prose.

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A collection of Zora Neale Hurston’s non-fiction that spans almost forty years, including many pieces out of print since their original publication and others that never saw the light of day. It’s clear from reading these that Hurston was deeply invested in promoting Black agency, refusing/resisting the “white gaze” or what she considered a "victim" label that she saw as a particularly insidious form of racism. Here are news pieces, reviews, and opinion pieces. Many stemming from Hurston’s insistence on recognition for Black culture in all its forms from genres like jazz through to preaching from pulpits in Black churches - connecting to her attempts to build a case for a Black aesthetic in a variety of contexts, and art forms, focusing on language, literature and music from blues to spirituals. Hurston draws extensively on folklore, oral histories of the last years of slavery and a variety of Black cultural output including her own fiction, often mobilising her background in anthropology. The strongest entries showcase Hurston's skill and versatility, her voice ranging from deceptively direct, forceful, astute to warm, funny or wonderfully scathing.

It’s a fascinating collection, both in what it reveals about Hurston, and about the turbulent times she witnessed and chronicled. Some essays are surprisingly pertinent even now: her thoughts on cultural appropriation of Black art forms; her ideas about stereotyping; concerns about the limitations placed on Black authors by white publishers, all too often calling for work that highlighted themes of racial tension or sociological conflict from passing to Black characters whose struggles suggest “a forlorn pacing of a cage barred by racial hatred.” Although Hurston’s also taking a less-than-subtle dig at the critics and authors who responded negatively to her own fiction which didn’t fit with the rise of the socially conscious narratives of Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison. Where Hurston wonders are the novels of everyday Black existence? The Black dentists and insurance officials, the average people striving to get on with their lives outside of the constraints of white society?

But some of these, her writing on “noses” for example, are less successful, disquieting even. And many highlight Hurston’s increasingly, sometimes deeply, conservative beliefs: her conventional perspectives on gender roles; her Republican politics, her scorn for so-called “Pinkos” and “Commies” that suggest a sympathy for elements of the McCarthyism of the time. She dislikes the NAACP, and rails against the desegregation of schools, partly because she sees no reason for mixing with white communities and all the prejudice and racism that may entail. Although, apparently, her segregationist stance attracted support from white political groups who resisted integration for rather more sinister reasons. After reading some of these, I had a much better understanding of why Hurston was frequently ostracised by many of her peers, marked out as contrary or just plain cantankerous. But, of course, her outspoken, opinionated stance on social, cultural, and political issues is also her trademark, what makes her work so compulsively readable. The selection’s rounded off with a series that showcases her talents, her reporting of the Ruby McCollum case from 1952, a Black woman who admitted to killing a prominent white physician who may or may not have fathered one of her children. Hurston’s approach foreshadows elements of the “new journalism” to come: a tangled but highly effective mix of fact and personal reaction, interviews, observations and imaginative story-telling. They’re cinematic, sometimes melodramatic but never less than gripping.

The book’s meticulously edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr and Genevieve West, compiled after extensive archival searches and investigations, it comes with a comprehensive introduction, useful background notes and documentation – my only quibble is that I’d have liked the dates and publication details for each entry placed next to it, so I had a clearer idea of origins, date of publication without having to scrabble about in the endnotes.

Thanks to Netgalley UK and publisher HQ, imprint of HarperCollins for an arc

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Reading this book is a discovery and for that reason alone I would have loved it. It is much more than that however, and once you get used to the author's style and that of other contributors it becomes an easier read. Individual stories related in a matter of fact manner definitely made me stop and think, sometime rereading a section on how both wanting to conform to a 'norm' and retaining their own identity not only personally but also in a religious sense became a daily battle the success of which varied greatly.

In addition the section focusing on the trial of Ruby McCollum in the early 1950s makes fascinating and compelling reading as do the opinions of Zora Neale Hurston on subjects she felt extremely passionate about over a period of more than three decades.

I was able to read an advanced copy of this book thanks to NetGalley and the publishers but the opinions expressed are my own. Overall this is an education but in an accessible and non preachy manner which is a very worthwhile read.

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Very difficult book to get to grips with. Written more like a school text book. I didn't enjoy it. I read the first few chapters thinking it was still the introduction and would get going but it didn't.

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