Transcripts For CSPAN2 Panel Discussion On Zora Neale Hurston 20160905

Booktv wants to know what youre reading this summer. Tweet us booktv or post it on our facebook page, facebook. Com booktv. Welcome once again, to the next panel discussion. May we have you listening please . Thank you, so much. This panel, i love myself when im laughing a century or more, a century and more of Zora Neale Hurston. I had the pleasure of using the moderator todays discussion. Farah jasmine griffin. She is author of five books. The focus of her stud study of cultural history. D she is professor of english and comparative literature studies. She has a book, comparativehe history of black women. Ladies and gentlemen, far a jasmine griffin. [applause] thank you and good afternoon. I know youre here because you love hurston, not because this is one of the only cant hear . Is that better . No . I will keep talking until you can hear me. I will try to speak a little more loud did i. Is that Getting Better . Food. I know youre here because you love Zora Neale Hurston, not because this is one of the only airconditioned venues today. Wholly appropriate we have the panel on hurston here in harlem which is a place she called home, a place thain inspired much of her work. Place that a place that started and catalyzed her career. This were will mark the 100th anniversary of her birth. She continues to be a writer and figure that mesmerizes us. Were joined by a group of thinkers, scholars, writers who spent quite a bit of time thinking about hurston and her work. I will give brief introductions of them. F well have a discussion and open it up to you. Our first speaker is yvette christianse. She is beloved friend and colleague. Like hurston, yvette writes in multiple forms. It she is accomplished poet. She is author of a beautifule novel, the unconfessed, i recommend you read, even if you dont have time and also a scholar, a literary scholar having written one of the most important books on Tony Morrison. She teaches at barnard college. So yvette will be our first speaker. Cheryl wall is leading hurston scholar. I cant think of anyone whol knows more about Zora Neale Hurston and her ken testimony aries than cheryl wall who is significant and important critic and leader in our field. She is the author of, worrying the line, black women writers, lineage and tradition and women in the harlem renaissance. She is a beloved professor at Rutgers University New Brunswick department of english. And our final speaker is rich blint. Many of you may know rich. He has quite the profile as sort of a curator of important cultural figure in our art scene. A writer, a scholar, and if cheryl is the leading scholar of hurston, rich is one of the leading scholars of James Baldwin. He is the coeditor of a special issue of africanamerican review which came out in winter 2013 but you can still get it as well as contributing editor of the James Baldwin review. Please join me welcoming these three extraordinary thinkers and writers. [applause] so there is never enough time to talk about Zora Neale Hurston. I thought i would open with a leading question that would allow our panelists to say, give Opening Statements about their thoughts on Zora Neale Hurston. If they would share their opening thoughts. If you are able to consider thi question in the context. I whatever you say i think will address this question, why should we still read Zora Neale Hurston 100 years after her birth . Start with yvette. Th . The. Well, i just want to say how wonderful it is to be on a panel. First i want to say how wonderful it is to be on this panel and particularly because this panel is sponsored by the feminist press, which is held a candle and kept it burning bright. Cant hear . I really am projecting. I think people in the front row will feel im shouting at you. I am just going to join the glorious shout that is zora kneel hurstons style. Hurston is so important to us. Two polls that existed in her life also says something about the way we read between her andt her writing. Most two polls were marked out by her parents. Her mother, who encouraged her to jump at the moon and her father who said, dont do that, dont get too uppity you will make white folks nervous and they wont like it. Those to me seem to be a fork in the road for hurston. One is i think about hurstons jumping and her jumping of all of her forms of writing which went from reporting the and indventing. The anthropologist, fiction writer, essayist and thinker. They were supposed to negotiate those very hour dells and rein the dislikes, those cautions, insistent on containment her father warned her about. I think when we read hurston now, particularly for those of us who were teachers, we often conflate hurston with her writings and i think it is absolutely an ethical issue to read hurston now more as the inventor, as the writer, able to read her writing. We may see some wonderful things as were doing that. And one of the earlier panels was about trying to get students to read, children to read. Reading is a form of listening, and hurston understood this so powerfully. If were nervous about president obama and he is nervousness about being too black in the eyes of the congress, we alsoin cant be nervous about whatso seems to be impossible, improbable, rude speech. I dont think president obama would ever yell as Zora Neale Hurston did when she won second prize for her play, color struck, she said, color struck. She wasnt demur. That was a different time. She found a way to negotiate the demands of respectability and attainment and behavior that hei father said she needed to observe and that jumping. I think the key for young people today, even for those of us who are in our 60s, it remains a critical issue and hurstons writings keep showing us again and again. That is my opening shot. My opening good afternoon. And im happy to be with all of you and i do believe with far a thank you for farah. The title the panel, i love myself, is something that i think is a wonderful startingtha point because we take it for granted for in this era of children being raised to have selfesteem, that children necessarily had selfesteem. Hurston came up in a time when nobody liked black people. Most black people did not love black people and the fact that she and loved black people without hesitation is that fact sets her apart. I do believe that the is first lesson that we can learn from Zora Neale Hurston and one of the reasons we should continue to read her. I imagine that most of you have read, their eyes are watching god, and one of the reasons i love reading their eyes are watching god, is the pleasure of their eyes are watching god. I laugh out loud every time i read it, even though i have read it two dozen times. There is still lines that i hear and i do try to read their eyes are watching god out loud at least a few passages and every time i teach the novel, the first class, a couple of students will raise hands and say, i cant understand this dialect. I cant read this. And i tell them, go home, read it aloud just as it is written. And if you do that, you willd hear the beauty and the humor in that language. That didnt just happen. To follow up on the comments. Zora Neale Hurston listens as we listened to the way ordinary black people spoke. She wasnt ashamed of how wespe. Speak. She loves how we speak. She loves the line, on the first page, the people on the porch,en they pass nations through their mouths. There was nothing black people couldnt talk about and have an opinion about and hurston took black people seriously at a time when that was not the norm. And sometimes even today, weree good to laugh at, were good to play, watch, play sports, but she took our opinions seriously. And i do believe thatss something that we can, and should continue to emulate. So two things, read Zora Neale Hurston because it gives us pleasure, it brings us joy. We should Zora Neale Hurston because she has much to teach us about loving ourselves. [applause] i think thats a really important question why Zora Neale Hurston is relevant now 125 years after her birth and, for me, Zora Neale Hurston came into my life when i was 6 00 teen. I had just been in the country for like four years, right . I was reading into these honors classes the iliad. Chaucer, really european things she became at a moment in my life which someone scared my mother. Why are you building a library . I went to the library i excaned excan excavated things that were nourishing to me. And i whole bunch, i Read Everything in the early part, in my late teens. With what i found was this example, because she was incredibly productive, her output but she was like contradictory, right . In a profound way. She was a republican but you know, she was fighting with Langston Hughes. She was doing all these things. She said in 1943 to collins, she is going to go the way of her own mind. So she is fiercely independent, a sovereign self. And why she is relevant now, which is also important, what was stunning to me reading everything together so much is the kind earlier assimulation, literary process but something to get me through a different kind of education. Was that she said like the dead human cold rocks like the says, commonplace [inaudible] where she has been, what she has done and we have to Pay Attention to that. So for me she serves as a model now of, beside her death in that way which is kind of tragic but she, is someone who said there o is no mourning bench for me,t right . She was for social justice s seriously, and at same timeme anachronistic around, you couldnt pin her down. Right. So that model of fierce independent spirit is why she is important today. She is also one of the most Brilliant Minds and hilarious figures of the early and mid 20th century. She just that. And, again because of where she died she reminds me a little bit that black women remained in my mind, farah, you were at last which is kind of stunning, i heard about it, i couldnt makes it because i was doing something elsewhere Kimberly Crenshaw asked people to stand up for the name of the black men who were killed and everyone stood up, from what i heard. When names of black women were killed, everyone took their seat because no one knew the names quite the same way. So i think zoras death, but her voice around feminist impulse in literature, there is certain kind of ugly correspondence there that youth should Pay Attention to, timely and contemporaneous and remind us of the work yet to do. So that is my opening salvo. O. Those are wonderful. So many ways we can go with what each of you said. Two things im hearing i would like to follow up on, especially yvette and cheryl, but also rich, if you could talk about hurstons use of language. When she does with the language so unique and rare. And also we can think about something rich said, we can follow that up with, rich talked about hurstons contradictions. Her contradictions are so fascinating, you know i think also sustained our inquiry as well. So lets start with her language and maybe talk about her contribution shuns. Contradictions. I had to Pay Attention and actually write something, so could i take a few minutes i would something you wrote. Im, i was thinking you know, in this wonderful new book that feminist press put out, i love myself and im laughing, the introductory essay is about alice walker and alice walker opens that with an account that says you know, hurston still makes many of us nervous and uncomfortable and she talksto about this friend who says, i dont think i would have liked her. I talked with someone else and neither of us would have, and the reason they wouldnt have liked her because of her behavior at private event when she had received that second prize for color color struck. I dont know why. I keep want to call it color counts but color struck. And hurston walked into thatt prize event and yelled the name of the prize, and for walkersat friends, this was just really a sign they wouldnt like her. But i think that yell is the thing that is important. She does not demure. And she just does what someone else had done earlier in american letters and for which he received and elevated to the highest status and prize. Im speaking of course of walt whitman. T so it sounded, he is selfproclaimed loud barbaric yelp across the rooftops of the world. He cleared the air and was lauded for it. I think hurston always all her life was clearing the air, but the way she did it was different. It wasnt with a certain kind of masculine bravado. I think she did it in the way that, in, the eyes of watching god, her grandmother teaches her in beautiful language, i dont want you to be raised to be a spit cup. Oh, damn, right . I want to read this. This is a moment where you see her achieving her craft. She achieved so many but this is just one and she is moving between the poles. There are other poles that still parallel those that her parents laid out for her. And that was, over what was proper for a college educatededd ethnographer the syntax is all there. I can do it. The spontaneity and legitimacy of other way she carries in reality. Also what i would like to say are instances instances when shr own in other ways and theyrenci important. So that is the right lift. Hurston writes, my search for knowledge of things took me into many strange places an adventures this is a straightforward sentence. It is a establishing, foreshadowing and a tense that is past tense. A tense can sustain, stablize and secure, correct . She said my life was in danger several times and it continues to rattle ordinary progress. In the way of story telling and there is a, and then, there is shift from the personal to the general. And we glimpsed the language that she learned from an throwo. Apology. The fact that anthropology had to unlearn those terms. She writes, primitive minds are quick to sunshine and quick to anger. Al throw anthropology, her right write something quick to sunshine and quick to anger. Security of the past tense is on notice she is destablized. She writes some little word or look, gesture to either love or stick a knife between your ribs. Someone is certainly close by and looking and is right there and you feel her ribs as you perhaps move toward her too. The past is now. It is here, it is a killer singing, im going to make me a graveyard of my own. It is present and it is also staking out the future. Im, i am, and i am going to make. Hurston who is dared to go in search of knowledge is in polk county with water that tasted like cherry wine where they sell great trees of axe and muscle. Here you see the past, time and space are beginning to lose their proper boundaries. The tenses shift and were in one of those big saw mill turn turn turpentine places where the law is lax. And she sets song where it should be, narrow margins and sucks the margins from the language margins of prose and left margin of obedience and right margin of adventure. She makes language visible and audible. She puts exclamation marks in, polk county and ah. The exclamation mark is a brisk and ah is word saying Something Holding the place for the word that is yet to come. I would like to think that is where you see hurston the writer inventing, making another place. Now we may breathe with her. We may feel the breath. We may assume that it is hurston tinge singing that sock and it may not be. If it is hurston, may not be the hurston we want to be stable but not sure she is one we want to be stable. Want to bring that language to us. To there you have a master reader who brings all of everything she has to bear to reading hurston. So thank you for sharing your reading with us. Cheryl . To bounce off of that, a couple things back out. Hurston in polk county, florida. A woman traveling by herself. A woman who is student at barnard. A black woman who is a student at barnard in 1926. Then she is at a Migrant Worker camp in polk county where she just doesnt show up and say, im here to teach you. She doesnt show up to say, im here for an hour, an afternoon, stays overnight and overnight and for days, she goes with this group of people working, with them as they work. She joins the community. And im always humbled by her sense of example as a scholar, whereas scholars in the academy, we, we think and we do work hard, and we do take our work seriously. But this level of commitment, is just beyond anything of us can ask. She is talking about how she has the language, the language of her education and the language which she grew up and the language of the people that she is working with. I once interviewed one of her classmates from howard university. This woman lived inro jacksonville, florida where one of hurstons brothers had run a Grocery Store for many years and this woman remembers zora, but she did want me to know that after howard zora really went backwards, was her phrase. And i knew what she meant was that hurston had started or rather resumed speaking in the way that she had spoken before she got to howard. For for this woman it was a sign much her going backwards. For hurston it was a sign of her coming more fully into herself. She refused this idea that black people spoke the way they did, by that i mean to be specific, rural southern black people spoke the way they did because they didnt know any better. They hadnt had enough education. Hurston, no, she said they spoke the way they did because they thought that way in their words and their words were beautiful. This idea, how do i get that on the page, that wasnt an easy thing. I love the way that yvette has taken that passage to say that a hurston uses that word hop, and does it multiple places in her writing, sometimes to help us hear a preacher and his rythym in the sermon. Sometimes to help us here the rythym of the folk singers because it is not easy to render the oral culture literate. That takes a lot of skill as any of us know if we try to transcribe the conversation we had with our friend on the phone last night, it will be a challenging thing to write that in a way that somebody else can read it and understand it. But hurston had that commitment to capture that lryism. That draws us back to her. The language and conversation go hand in hand to me and theyre not separate. F im thinking more about at the beginning, what you said, in 1943, Zora Neale Hurston wrote s letter to cullen and that is at the the at Amistad Research center in new orleans. She is telling off elf gantly, as she is wont to do, talking about community of literary figures, men mostly, but black writers who want to join the bandwagon of the moment. What is interesting saying all what of that, she is, how do i say, she is pisyy and then she backs up a little bit. She talks about how the kind of religion of anglosaxon of america, which echoes James Baldwin. She also suggestions in different pieces, in her work which kind of corresponds can you guys hear me . Which corresponds to, just in the kneeing gee negro correction in the 1930s, that is a part and parcel of the black life, right . In the beginning of that letter she talks about, also in characteristics she talks about a metaphor being preeminent. A proverb for the big old lies and tall tales is a real embrac of the sophistication of black language, right . But she suggests in a way that comes out of privileging a certain way of reading that, to illustrate she says, it is much easier than to explain. Think about the critics for her who say the language is embarrassing and things like that. She herself in a moment that is really complicated is suggesting that metaphor is primitive when to me, and jamaican language for instance, which you, language here, you are moving at high cotton. Think how amazing a term, turn your hand and make fashion. You know what i mean . Ur all the ways with that a certain kind of sophistication and not at all a sign of primitiveness, right . But she also in another moment i shared with the students, on page 87, you should look this up. There is something about poverty that smells like death. Dead dreams drop around the heart like leaves in the dry season and unfettered air of underground cave. The soul lives in sickly air. People can be slave ships in shoes. You hear what im saying to you . That is hurston breaking it down. Whether she was conservative republican, win she was, she talks for any scholar, so binary about her complex history should be kind of slapped a little bit, maybe not physically but intellectually slapped because she says it about those unconcerned with social justice but there is no mourners bench for me. Right. She knows that black poor folks are like, goes louie xiv on the side, you cant find me a black man who is not imperious. So there is a contradiction between how black people are and how were treated. Right. So she is not going along with the moment of protest literature of certain people but the actions of turning into a National Narrative for her is belittling or diminishing. She also suggests even though she takes with mason a fair amount of money and in the letter she throws parties that are kind of compromising but she says also that she is not going to do this, she does this for the cheap coin of pat troh imagine. Patronage. And how she lives in political life and fiercely contradiction and a person rich for investigation and so i think, but there is so much more to say about the language. But im sorry. Well, this is leading this, is because, rich brought this up a couple times. Were referencing many different hurston texts. Most people are familiar with their eyes are watching god. She was a journalist. She was a playwrite. And she was a choreographer. If you want to get a taste of the full range of thurston before digging into the books, this feminist press edition, new edition, for many of us was a bible before her other works were available, is a great collection of the range of her writings, autobiographical. Ethno graphic. That is a good place to start. Maybe one day like rich on page 82 this is what happened. [applause] this one just corrected me and said it was page 87. But this, you know one of the things, rich has alluded to this is her political conservative. I think we would, not do her justice if we did not talk about her politics and one of the things that i think if we only take one thing from hurston, her as a literary figure and the language she bequeathed us because Everything Else is there, hurston has a kind of conservatism that changes, i would say, becomes more staunch and what we identify as political conservatism at the end much her life. In the beginning of her life it is not something necessarily share by many black people but it is never, it is never, you can correct me if im wrong, her political conservatism is never antiblack. She kind of justifies it in a problackness, right . One thing you can talk about a little bit, since her death she was been claimed by feminists, by black con irv serve tiffs, by black nationalists, by leftists and most recently by libertarians. How can any one person leave a legacy up for grabs in that way . Do you have thoughts on that . Rich, youve been sorry. Say i think that speaks to what you were saying about hurston and, we are all saying that hurston is this contradictory person. Now i think she would say, like whitman, do i contradict myself . I contradict myself. That this condition of being contradictory i think for hurston i believe the human condition. She is not going to apologize for it. Just in terms of her conservatism at the end of hera life, even in the 1940s is politically very troubling to put it mildly, but it grows out after booker t. Washington perspective, that is the perspective which she was raised. She was educated in eatonville, florida, the all black town which she grew up and which she was fiercely proud. The people who founded the school in eatonville had been educated at does key gee institute under tutelage of booker t. Washington. The whole philosophy of even tonville was selfhelp. Pull yourselves up by your bootstraps. That is the way she had been raised. I agree with you, at that that time, turn of the 20th century that is not an unconventional philosophy for black americans in general. Most black americans have endorsed that. What hurston is not able to do, to evolve. By the time she writes, politically she evolves as an artist, so by 1954 when she write as letter to the editor o1 the orlando sentinel, this brown very board of education decision, that is really insult to black people because we dont need black children to be in school with white children in order to learn something. We were learning just fine in eatonville. Locally, personally, that might have been true. Politically, correctively, that is just a reactionary position and i just, i dont, you how can that be defended . It can be it can be explained and i think it can be explained by her biography. But i dont think that is what we take away from hurston. That is not what i take away from hurston at least. I mean i think the contradiction of Zora Neale Hurston is, so important to comn mind, right . So thank you for coming back tom this. What is important i think about it is, because it shows up in so many ways as cheryl was saying and, there is no way to reconcile her kind of republicanism, except to say were all differently equipped, right . The way i reconcile it because i guess of her literary output in some ways. She turns up in all these other ways which of moments black nationalism, and early moments but youre jarred by that stuff. Go back to what farah said at beginning youre never unsure that she loves black people, ever once. Youre kind of confused and disoriented by it but never once concerned by that. What i realize is what she called for in that letter to cullen about a certain kind of, americas refusal to be with black inferiority. They knew who block people were. Which personifies herself, she won second place, walks in, flashes a boa and walks out. She is that autonomy, sovereignty, that complexly recognize and embrace inferiority that is not granted black people as a matter of the being excluded from certain kinds of citizenship and how theyre perceived in the popular imagination is how, i dont know, i let her off the hook as consequences are too steep but she is so nourishing in all that she has done. She also kept working up until her death, right . So she wrote something which after being public is kind of a minor work, i think, you know what i mean . But we can walk in both feet and say things simultaneously. So the contradiction is why the contradiction of American Life already . So the woman who can talk about violence in one hand, at the same time, throw parties that romantacized the colorful, primitive ways of black people and being a ethnographer. It is inch credible we he get that stuff. I am so glad you mentioned eatonville and tuskegee. What i see in those two poles in her parents lives, it was actually the debate between dubois and washington. The mother saying, jump at the sun and the father saying, exit the status quo. T and it is just, it is important because it is the issue that comes up again and we shove it away. There was a class, in not, as sort of boldly defined outline but Zora Neale Hurston her mothers family did think they were better than the fathers family. So i think she did also inherit some of those tensions. Thats it. I also dont want to let her off the hook. There are things i think, the way she is on the subway andubwd makes it utterly withering unacceptable remark about my people embarrassing me. Something, i cant even remember the exact language because i glance away and look away because one should not. I think there are many hours tons. That is what bothers us. She is not the proper past tense. S she is not contained, stable. She is constantly remakingally e herself. Rself becaus because there was no space for her yet. She was not yet. She, i think we also have to understand her as, as someone who is in process. Yes, as she got older i think there was nowhere else for her to go. I, yeah, that is, so to say that i think that her writing is through all of these conflicts and we should read not only the eyes were watching god. Can i say one quick thing, one small thing because it is really important. What does it mean that Zora Neale Hurston, her conflict she was brought up on morals charge in 1948 and found out working at the maine and trying to make a living as a writer. For her, to given all that she produced, given all the fame, that she was always drumming to literally feed herself. So the contradictions of a certain kind of fame should be appropriate for some one who did that kind of work and that she was discovered in this way, is really kind of shocking to me. So, footnote, she was brought up on a morals charge and she was found innocent. Yes, yes. Get that out there. Asset. Thank you. But the contradiction, no one has said it more eloquently than alice walker, her champion and the editor of the volume that we are here to recognize, but did it mean to be an artist in my mothers time. My grandmothers time, what did it mean for a black woman to be an artist. There were no models for Zora Neale Hurston. There was no space for Zora Neale Hurston. Sp this process as you say of constantly inventing herself, trying to claim a space to speak at all was an on going struggle and one again, i think of her traveling those back roads of alabama, of florida, of louisiana, by herself, in search of black people and black peoples culture at a time when nobody was interested in that. You know, maybe somebody wants to say, well we could take a spirit all, maybe make it into a symphony or take a folk tale and maybe make it the basis of a novel. Here is hurston saying no, no, i want to honor these Cultural Expressions for themselves. I think, yes, i argued with zora on a regular basis and have done so for many years but there are those moments when i sit back and im really in awe of the courage and integrity of the perseverance that it took for her to do what she did. I have one last question before we open it up, and thats, weve been talking about, we all keep talking about their eyes were watching god because it is so rich and weve been alluding to these other texts. If you could leave our audience with something that you think they should read, not only their eyes but something that moves you or compels you that you keep going back to, what might that be . [inaudible] i just, i read it all. But i really think those tracks on the road is extraordinary. But having said that, yeah, i believe tracks on the road is the autobiography. It is actually on a road. I think the significance, i think the significance of shifting it from the definite article is hurstons cake. I would recommend two things one is the short story sweat, published by spire in 1926 which is distillation of hurstons mastery of language, of her concern and exploration of gender politics of the psychology of marriage, of wonderful, wonderful stories. The second thing just you dont have to read it all, dip in, mules and men. Which is her first volume of africanamerican folklore collected and edited by an africanamerican, published in 1935 and you will find in that some of us will phrases and stories even that we have heard in our families and again stories are laugh out loud funny and sometimes deeply unsettling. It took me a long time to figure out how to teach mules and men. The store flies in with god, make me black. Whoa, that is not an easy story to teach in the classroom. Why would people ask such a story . Why would that be a folk tale . When everything in our life, if youre a southerner in the early decades of the 20th century in the u. S. South where you lived, who you loved, where you worked, everything was dependent whether you were a black or white. When you think about that, that does not just become a tale, oh, isnt that funny or isnt that embarrassing . Isnt this an example of people really trying to come to terms with what is existential in their lives. No question is more important. A lot of laugh out loud and funny moments in mules and men. I want to say Read Everything read dust tracks in a road but almost like a bio mythology in some ways. The first part about her dad is rich. She is elusive in the second part. I think mules and men is really good. She does, and im black, and there is recircling when she goes to tell me horse, kind of first person to write this popular account of voodoo practice and practices in haiti and jamaica. I also think her essays, no one talks about that much, white publishers wouldnt publish, 1938 i think. And also characteristics ofth negro expression, right, where she really distills in the early part problematically what makes, why she is compelled to kind of collect this literature. But, Read Everything. You got time. I was going to say, tell my horse as well. They said the other ones. Quote tell my horse. We see these contradictions. We see hurston theefore using ethninggrapher. We see her sensibility before we use that world. Hurston takes black people in the western hemisphere so seriously and first to say voodoo is religion and this is why and these are the components. Hurston has some moments of american nationalism about the u. S. Occupation. Hurston who is like so u. S. Centric in how she sees the caribbean. I think you get all the hours tons weve been talking about,e in tell my horse. I agree with characteristics because it is so wonderful tot see her take us so seriously and talk about how when you go into a black persons house andnd everything is on an angle. Or how we turn, how we turn announce into verbs, right . And whenever i hear somebody use the word, conversate, i think about hurston. That is inventiveness that is not bad english. The word doesnt exist. We make it exist. Hurston has that which i think is so beautiful. Reminds me of what baldwin was, if black english aint english i dont know what is. Hurston for me embodies that. L right, right. Lets open it up. We have a few questions to get them in [inaudible] ill repeat it. Thank you for this wonderful panel. Im taking a lot from it. As proud winner of the Zora Neale Hurston writing award at Columbia University for [applause] the institute for research in africanamerican history, i really appreciate this panel what you bring with all of the contradictions and talking about Zora Neale Hurston and the original question why it is important makes me think about what is it about Zora Neale Hurston for today that is instructive for our understanding today, say of black women today . How can, how is Zora Neale Hurston present today . How is she a role model or how is it that her life can be instructive for us thinking about black women hood today . I would say first of all thed importance of knowing ones self and claiming ones voice. When we talk about the politics of respectability, which are still with us, we talk about whether one must defer to the men in ones life, or whether one can assert her own opinion. I think hurston is just modeling that for us all the time. She is modeling it for us with the understanding that there are consequences. That there may be some blow back, but that the importance of understanding who one is and expressing what one thinks, itit is just paramount. We have a question over here. [inaudible]. She imagined black women free. When you think about all of the things that were around saying we werent, or that in their eyes, right, that nanny, nanny is a product of enslavement and she cant imagine a possibility beyond the legacy of slavery. Jane is like, i want to be free. I think that is what hurstone. Gives us. At same time she has such aha great imagine and she can imagine us free and imagine herself free, she doesnt always see the things that mitigate that quest for freedom for us. But, i think that is what she gives us, you know, a willingness to imagine, this is what it looks like when black women are free. Essentially in a way it is almost easier and expected for us to say what does she give us. What i would like to just insert is, how do we treat her now. And i have just one thing, and im saying this with fear and trembling on this particular stage with these particular thinkers, because they have written about Zora Neale Hurston the daughter, you know, the mother of us all walker called her, i think it is important for us to not keep drawing her into the recognizable woman who whom we can relate as sister or as mother. But i think that, that in a way, orient toward expecting her to keep nuturing us and i think she is doing something else. I think there is another role for the kind of woman that Zora Neale Hurston was and is what we have of her now. I just want to say that. I think its very important. She was not a mother. No. Thats for sure. A wife. Go ahead, rich. I want to say in addition to what has been said really you beautifully, what i said she is often not here to nourish us but not to contemplate her personal life with her professional life, but i think as i said earlier something about how dogged she has to be, in all the different ways i mentioned, right . E because of certain vulnerability about black woman as not being treated seriously. She is a serious american writer. I mean her output was she is not just a black woman writer. Shoe he is a writer of extraordinary skill and quality. And but she died in the way she did and she was always fabulous, dont get me wrong, but there is something about that denies. The fact that Robert Hemingway her biographer, about alicey walkers placement, the lore that no way walker can know exactly where she was buried. Think about that for a second. So there is kind of honorary, grave stone. So thats her exit from this realm in that way and in the nursing home, while she is stilr writing, right . Reminds me of the work that we all need to do about understanding what it means to be a black woman in america, right . It reminds me of how unfulfille the democratic promise has been. That we really dont understand that black women are really part of that in a really significant way. That is what she does to me. In addition to all of this stuff really nourishing, i want to say in a contemporary moment we have to reckon with that, we really do. We really do. Yes. As a contemporary of marcus garvey, based on your collective research, have you found any pan african influence or lean in her writing or being influenced by garvey during that time . Wor thurston published two poems in negro world, the newspaper that garvey published. She was conscious enough of his work that she sent her poems to that publication. I dont think that, im not trying to suggest she is a garveyite because shes not but she is interested, as farah says, in this kind of African Diaspora community. That there is, at the end of, end of their eyes are watching god, when think go to the muck and really working as Migrant Workers, that is however a Diaspora Community and hurston is constantly, her narrator making us aware the fact that there are bahamians in the community, that there are other people from the caribbean in the community, and that they are working cooperatively with each other despite, she doesnt pay enough attention to the capitalist system that theyre all working for, but among themselves they are working with each other. So she does have that connection so think. Im so sorry, cheryl, what is interesting she is influenced by another jamaican, claude mckay. She says in talking about her conservativism and hers, she said White Association is not important to her youre about something. What is important about another white hide. That is a wonderful phrase, another white hide. Mckay dice and she reproduces one of his poems in the ethos. That is radical f 100 negroes are willing to do then we can do something. Then im there. If you want to jump on commercial bandwagon then imis sitting this one out. There is real, the claude mckay thing reminds me of die as pouric connection, given his history in harlem and. Cake, much like marcus garvey. [inaudible] it is hard to reconcile those two things. The only time she is critical of the u. S. In a real way is when she sees it engaging in a form of colonialism that it doesnt want to call colonialism but shg is almost always, she is never looking outside of the United States as a place for black americans. There is another. I wanted to thank the panelists because what you all have done, you have galvanized me to go home and read one of hursts books i have behind the head forever. Suwannee on the raft . Is that the one . That is the one i want to go home and read. I think of some things she said. Somewhere i was reading, ive been to Hells Kitchen and licked out all the pots. And im thinking we say Tony Morrison said language must notn sweat but i like the way hursto makes her language sweat. I love the way she does that i have a bottle tree in my front yard behind Zora Neale Hurston. My question is what the genesis of that . How did she come about feeling that . She was a person that was always interested in the bible. Her first novel, the title comes from a verse in the bible. Shes a baptist preachers daughter. Shes raised in the church and she was always fascinated with religion so i would not ever say that she was traditionally religious person. She even said black people are christians really. Her spirituality was heterodox but she was very much interested in the bible and i suspect that it is that interest that led her to imagine writing a biography. Thank you. I also would like to say this is such a phenomenal panel of guests. Im a fourth generation storyteller to children and im also with the arizona world and they were excited i was coming here so myquestion , ive been fortunate to teach literacy to children from k12 and i want to incorporate, i have hundreds of stories ive written and adopted but i want to incorporate this incredible woman that we should develop audiences for our children. Now, im not very keen on all her writings but with this great panel, are there any suggestions of writings that will at least embrace childrens thinking or thoughts or something that could be adopted that i could tell that i may not know about . Read of mules and men, thats really adaptable to children. Its stories about butterflies and animals and i think those are the stories, thats where i would start. You could find material there. That could really relate to children. Those stories are wonderful. She didnt write them so they belong to us. Yes, you have a recommendation. Hello doctor cheryl and nelson from the Zora Neale Hurston festival. I also incorporate childrens literature in my coursework teaching and Community College of philadelphia and the one that they love the best is Zora Neale Hurston and the china berry tree so if you would like one to start with, that would be a great one. Theres also one entitled the three witches, okay . And thats a good one as well. I have copies at home. But yes, you can get them at any online bookstore so try to, thank you panelists. Audience, theres always people in the audience who know as much if not more than the people on the panel. Hi, my name is angeline. I just wanted to comment the fact that ive been in avid tran one reader and every time i read her life story i get very sad that she really lived a hard life. She suffered a lot. I know she had a breakdown with Langston Hughes and that white patrons, the effect they had on black literary frontage controlling the type of writing they were doing and that had a lot to do with removing back south, going to florida because she wanted really to write the kind of writing that she wanted to do. She didnt want the White Literary world or the white patrons to influence the kind of writing that other black writers were influenced by. My point is that she suffered as a result of her resistance. She suffered from life. I dont know if anybody mentioned, she was accused of child abuse or child neglect. She was acquitted and she suffered a lot as the result of the accusation, the fact that she was discovered as a maid and she was on public assistance for a long time and she suffered and in my opinion i think she was one of the most important black writers of the 20th century so i just wanted to talk about the fact, the sacrifice that she made for her to be able to write the book or the writing that i consider the most authentic in america and just the poverty that she went through. The sacrifice that she made because she didnt want to be a sellout. The one thing i would say about that which i think is absolutelytrue and you guys please weigh in , is that she chose to do that. She was committed to that. She chose not to do a certain kind of commercial route, even when she did early on as a way to survive and to serve as that kind of witness right, to be that committed to what black people, our freedom, to gather that narrative in the way that she did, for me is triumphant. Its heroic area did so because she didnt want, when i was saying before about her life i wanted to not be lost that over and theres something really instructive about how real that is for a lot of people. In academia and writing, that could be the outcome. Baldwin says and i mentioned it too much but he knows a lot of brilliant ruins. Shes not that but it reminds you that if you take that path that it might be a little bumpy but look what shes given us . As you said, so i just wanted to be both triumphant and witness to her sacrifice at the same time. You did remind us of the price she paid area we also have to remember she was very ill and she was impoverished. She couldnt afford the kind of medical assistance that she could have had. In virginia new orleans book of the last decade is i think an important book to read because you still see what id like to say is her mothers daughter. Shes down on her luck, its a mobile home. Its just so sad. In the sense that she has no security. She lost her home, she thought she could buy. She couldnt afford it and she had been lacerated psychically by that vicious journalism that did write about the molestation charge and they didnt actually follow through by saying well, shes not only been exonerated but shed been so falsely accused she wasnt even in the country when this molestation was supposed to happen. I think its important that you remember, that you do look at the virginia memorial book because you see her. Shes so opinionated with opinions but shes feisty, shes insistent and shes not giving an inch. I think that you know, there are tragic dimensions in her life but i dont think that her life is a tragic one. And i think thats the important difference. Thats how she would want to be remembered also and to me, one of the things i find and i wake up with a headache and i cant write a sentence and shes writing until the very end. That sense of self and the need to create and produce, whatever is taken away from her, that is never taken away from her. After this, they say they never wrote again. We cant say that about her. As she said, tragically colored. One more hand, okay. [audio lost] you are asking aquestion, asking us to comment on a person as an anthropologist and her values as an anthropologist. And how she was able to integrate her audience. Integrate her values into her writing. Coming from someone whos trained as an anthropologist. Im not trained as an anthropologist although i was an anthropology minor in college but yes, anthropology as you are saying has this very dexterity, these are people of color. The thing that stands out first of all because she comes to new york. She comes to barnard where she studies science law with the socalled father of american anthropology. At the same time as was it me which is a name i dont know anybody knows anymore. It used to be a big name but he was actually in samoa when person came to barnard. He wrote a very important or influential book called comingofage in samoa. Theres another woman at barnard who has studied the indians of the southwest. And heres tran one and she, i dont want to say they, it is suggested that she to find a group of people to study and she says im going home. Im going to eatonville. Thats a very profound thing because she didnt go back to where she was from and to go back to one of these Home Communities and take those people who one knows intimately seriously, take the idea seriously, take the everyday practices seriously, take the cultural expression seriously and not put them out there as objects of ridicule or pity, i think is a very profound thing and i would say that person makes an intervention in anthropology. The other thing she does very quickly is she doesnt just tell tales in girls and men. She presents those folks in context so we get a whole storytelling process which as i understand it, anthropologists came to appreciate faster and first initiated that example in men so she does that make a profound contribution to the study of anthropology. I think its also important to remember that hurston did not turn the people she spoke with into ethnographic artifacts. Also, she lived from them in a way they could also read. She did not alienate them from their own story. One thing i would like to add to follow up with the my point earlier is you see some of hurstons blind spots in the caribbean. For me, that adds to the layers of hurston and so the moment in tell my horse where im cringing, right . To have that witness and as you both said in mules and men to become the scene and its early, right . The limits of her imagination, the limits of what it means to tell about where shes from. This reminds us that we all have work to do and anthropology itself is a discipline. She be bottles and shes always worth the time. Thank you so much for helping us celebrate tran one. [applause] book tv recently visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what they are reading this summer i hope to finish a couple of books, first of all im reading freedoms path which was given to me by senator roy blunt and this is a book that is about the dome being put on the Capital Building precivil war but what is i found especially interesting is i get into the book is a focus on the house, chamber and Senate Chamber and how those were added through the original Capital Building and one of the main proponents of that is Jefferson Davis so while we are approaching the civil war we have Jefferson Davis really helping our country, helping build a Capital Building which would serve our entire country and then we know later that he became the president of the confederacy so thats a book i am hoping to get through. I started it and i need to finish it area i also want to read about destiny and power which is the book by john meacham on george hw bush. I would like to get that done this summer and then every summer i tried to read a book that ive read before. Last december i read to kill a mockingbird. The summer before that i read all the kings men which is one of my favorite books and this summer im going to reread dickens tale of two cities. Book tv wants to know what youre reading this summer. We just your answer at book tv or posted on our facebook page, facebook. Com book tv. Heres a look at upcoming book fairs and festivals in september. On saturday, september 18 its the brooklyn book festival held in downtown brooklyn new york. Te