Dust Tracks on a Road (31 page)

Hurston's achievement in
Dust Tracks
is twofold. First, she gives us a
writer's
life, rather than an account, as she says, of “the Negro problem.” So many events in this text are figured in terms of Hurston's growing awareness and mastery of books and language, language and linguistic rituals as spoken and written both by masters of the Western tradition and by ordinary members of the black community. These two “speech communities,” as it were, are Hurston's great sources of inspiration not only in her novels but also in her autobiography.

The representation of her sources of language seems to be her principal concern, as she constantly shifts back and forth between her “literate” narrator's voice and a highly idiomatic black voice found in wonderful passages of free indirect discourse. Hurston moves in and out of these distinct voices effortlessly, seamlessly, just as she does in
Their Eyes
to chart Janie's coming to consciousness. It is this usage of a
divided
voice, a double voice unreconciled, that strikes me as her great achievement, a verbal analogue of her double experiences as a woman in a male-dominated world and as a black person in a nonblack world, a woman writer's revision of W. E. B.
Du Bois's metaphor of “double-consciousness” for the hyphenated African-American.

Her language, variegated by the twin voices that intertwine throughout the text, retains the power to unsettle.

Elsewhere she analyzes black “idioms” used by a culture “raised on simile and invective. They know how to call names,” she concludes, then lists some, such as 'gator mouthed, box-ankled, puzzle-gutted, shovel-footed: “Eyes looking like skint-ginny nuts, and mouth looking like a dish-pan full of broke-up crockery!”

Immediately following the passage about her mother's death, she writes:

Language, in these passages, is not merely “adornment,” as Hurston described a key black linguistic practice; rather, manner and meaning are perfectly in tune: she says the thing in the most meaningful manner. Nor is she being “cute,” or pandering to a condescending white readership. She is “naming” emotions, as she says, in a language both deeply personal and culturally specific.

The second reason that
Dust Tracks
succeeds as literature arises from the first: Hurston's unresolved tension between
her double voices signifies her full understanding of modernism. Hurston uses the two voices in her text to celebrate the psychological fragmentation both of modernity and of the black American. As Barbara Johnson has written, hers is a rhetoric of division, rather than a fiction of psychological or cultural unity. Zora Neale Hurston, the “real” Zora Neale Hurston that we long to locate in this text, dwells in the silence that separates these two voices: she is both, and neither; bilingual, and mute. This strategy helps to explain her attraction to so many contemporary critics and writers, who can turn to her works again and again only to be startled at her remarkable artistry.

But the life that Hurston could write was not the life she could live. In fact, Hurston's life, so much more readily than does the standard sociological rendering, reveals how economic limits determine our choices even more than does violence or love. Put simply, Hurston wrote well when she was comfortable, wrote poorly when she was not. Financial problems—book sales, grants and fellowships too few and too paltry, ignorant editors and a smothering patron—produced the sort of dependence that affects, if not determines, her style, a relation she explored somewhat ironically in “What White Publishers Won't Print.” We cannot oversimplify the relation between Hurston's art and her life; nor can we reduce the complexity of her postwar politics, which, rooted in her distaste for the pathological image of blacks, were markedly conservative and Republican.

Nor can we sentimentalize her disastrous final decade, when she found herself working as a maid on the very day the
Saturday Evening Post
published her short story “Conscience of the Court” and often found herself without money, surviving after 1957 on unemployment benefits, substitute teaching, and welfare checks. “In her last days,” Hemenway concludes dispassionately, “Zora lived a difficult life—alone, proud, ill, obsessed with a book she could not finish.”

The excavation of her buried life helped a new generation read Hurston again. But ultimately we must find Hurston's
legacy in her art, where she “ploughed up some literacy and laid by some alphabets.” Her importance rests with the legacy of fiction and lore she constructed so cannily. As Hurston herself noted, “Roll your eyes in ecstasy and ape his every move, but until we have placed something upon his street corner that is our own, we are right back where we were when they filed our iron collar off.” If, as a friend eulogized, “She didn't come to you empty,” then she does not leave black literature empty. If her earlier obscurity and neglect today seem inconceivable, perhaps now, as she wrote of Moses, she has “crossed over.”

H
ENRY
L
OUIS
G
ATES
, J
R
.

WORKS BY ZORA NEALE HURSTON

Jonah's Gourd Vine
. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1934.

Mules and Men
. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1935.

Their Eyes Were Watching God
. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1937.

Tell My Horse
. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1938.

Moses, Man of the Mountain
. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1939.

Dust Tracks on a Road
. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1942.

Seraph on the Suwanee
. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948.

I Lote Myself When I Am Laughing…& Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader
. Edited by Alice Walker. Old Westbury, N.Y.: The Feminist Press, 1979.

The Sanctified Church
. Edited by Toni Cade Bambara, Berkeley: Turtle Island, 1981.

Spunk: The Selected Short Stories of Zora Neale Hurston
. Berkeley: Turtle Island, 1985.

WORKS ABOUT ZORA NEALE HURSTON

Baker, Houston A., Jr.
Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature. A Vernacular Theory
, pp. 15–63. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

Bloom, Harold, ed.
Zora Neale Hurston
, New York: Chelsea House, 1986.

———, ed.
Zora Neale Hurston's “Their Eyes Were Watching God
.” New York: Chelsea House, 1987.

Byrd, James W. “Zora Neale Hurston: A Novel Folklorist.”
Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin
21 (1955): 37–41.

Cooke, Michael G. “Solitude: The Beginnings of Self-Realization in Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison.” In Michael G. Cooke,
Afro-American Literature in the Twentieth Century
, pp. 71–110. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.

Dance, Daryl C. “Zora Neale Hurston.” In
American Women Writers: Bibliographical Essays
, edited by Maurice Duke, et al. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. “The Speakerly Text.” In Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,
The Signifying Monkey
, pp. 170–217. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Giles, James R. “The Significance of Time in Zora Neale Hurston's
Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Negro American Literature Forum
6 (Summer 1972). 52–53, 60.

Hemenway, Robert E.
Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography
. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1977.

Holloway, Karla.
The Character of the Word: The Texts of Zora Neale Hurston
. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1987.

Holt, Elvin, “Zora Neale Hurston.” In
Fifty Southern Writers After 1900
. edited by Joseph M. Flura and Robert Bain, pp. 259–69. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1987.

Howard, Lillie Pearl.
Zora Neale Hurston
. Boston: Twayne, 1980.

———. “Zora Neale Hurston.” In
Dictionary of Literary Biography
, vol. 51, edited by Trudier Harris, pp. 133–45. Detroit: Gale, 1987.

Jackson, Blyden. “Some Negroes in the Land of Goshen.”
Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin
19 (4) (December 1953): 103–7.

Johnson, Barbara. “Metaphor, Metonymy, and Voice in
Their Eyes
.” In
Black Literature and Literary Theory
, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., pp. 205–21. New York: Methuen, 1984.

———. “Thresholds of Difference: Structures of Address in Zora Neale Hurston.” In
“Race,” Writing and Difference
, edited by Henry Lewis Gates, Jr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.

Jordan, June. “On Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston.”
Black World
23 (10) (August 1974): 4–8.

Kubitschek, Missy Dehn. “‘Tuh de Horizon and Back': The Female Quest in
Their Eyes,” Black American Literature Forum
17 (3) (Fall 1983): 109–15.

Lionnet, Françoise. “Autoethnography: The Anarchic Style of
Dust Tracks on a Road
.” In Françoise Lionnet,
Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, Self-Portraiture
, pp. 97–130. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989.

Lupton, Mary Jane. “Zora Neale Hurston and the Survival of the Female.”
Southern Literary Journal
15 (Fall 1982): 45–54.

Meese, Elizabeth. “Orality and Textuality in Zora Neale Hurston's
Their Eyes
.” In Elizabeth Meese,
Crossing the Double Cross. The Practice of Feminist Criticism
, pp. 39–55. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.

Newson, Adele S.
Zora Neale Hurston: A Reference Guide
. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987.

Rayson, Ann. “
Dust Tracks on a Road:
Zora Neale Hurston and the Form of Black Autobiography.”
Negro American Literature Forum
7 (Summer 1973): 42–44.

Sheffey, Ruthe T., ed.
A Rainbow Round Her Shoulder: The Zora Neale Hurston Symposium Papers
. Baltimore: Morgan State University Press, 1982.

Smith, Barbara. “Sexual Politics and the Fiction of Zora Neale Hurston.”
Radical Teacher
8 (May 1978): 26–30.

Stepto, Robert B.
From Behind the Veil
. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979.

Walker, Alice. “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston.”
Ms
., March 1975, pp. 74–79, 85–89.

Wall, Cheryl A. “Zora Neale Hurston: Changing Her Own Words.” In
American Novelists Revisited: Essays in Feminist Criticism
, edited by Fritz Fleischmann, pp. 370–93. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982.

Washington, Mary Helen. “Zora Neale Hurston: A Woman Half in Shadow.” Introduction to
I Love Myself When I Am Laughing
, edited by Alice Walker. Old Westbury, N.Y.: Feminist Press, 1979.

———. “‘I Love the Way Janie Crawford Left Her Husbands': Zora Neale Hurston's Emergent Female Hero.” In Mary Helen Washington,
Intented
Lites: Narratives of Black Women, 1860–1960
. New York: Anchor Press, 1987.

Willis, Miriam. “Folklore and the Creative Artist: Lydia Cabrera and Zora Neale Hurston.”
CLA Journal
27 (September 1983): 81–90.

Wolff, Maria Tai. “Listening and Living: Reading and Experience in
Their Eyes,” BALF
16 (1) (Spring 1982): 29–33.

January 7, 1891 Born in Notasulga, Alabama, the fifth of eight children, to John Hurston, a carpenter and Baptist preacher, and Lucy Potts Hurston, a former schoolteacher.

September 1917–June 1918 Attends Morgan Academy in Baltimore, completing the high school requirements.

Summer 1918 Works as a waitress in a nightclub and a manicurist in a black-owned barbershop that serves only whites.

1918–19 Attends Howard Prep School, Washington, D.C.

1919–24 Attends Howard University; receives an associate degree in 1920.

1921 Publishes her first story, “John Redding Goes to Sea,” in the
Stylus
, the campus literary society's magazine.

December 1924 Publishes “Drenched in Light,” a short story, in
Opportunity
.

1925 Submits a story, “Spunk,” and a play,
Color Struck
, to
Opportunity
's literary contest. Both win second-place awards; publishes “Spunk” in the June number.

1925–27 Attends Barnard College, studying anthropology with Franz Boas.

1926 Begins field work for Boas in Harlem.

January 1926 Publishes “John Redding Goes to Sea” in
Opportunity
.

Summer 1926 Organizes
Fire
, with Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman; they publish only one issue, in November 1926. The issue includes Hurston's “Sweat.”

August 1926 Publishes “Muttsy” in
Opportunity
.

September 1926 Publishes “Possum or Pig” in the
Forum
.

September–November 1926 Publishes “The Eatonville Anthology” in the
Messenger
.

1927 Publishes
The First One
, a play, in Charles S. Johnson's
Ebony and Topaz
.

February 1927 Goes to Florida to collect folklore.

May 19, 1927 Marries Herbert Sheen.

September 1927 First visits Mrs. Rufus Osgood Mason, seeking patronage.

October 1927 Publishes an account of the black settlement at St. Augustine, Florida, in the
Journal of Negro History:
also in this issue: “Cudjo's Own Story of the Last African Slaver.”

December 1927 Signs a contract with Mason, enabling her to return to the South to collect folklore.

1928 Satirized as “Sweetie Mae Carr” in Wallace Thurman's novel about the Harlem Renaissance
Infants of the Spring;
receives a bachelor of arts degree from Barnard.

January 1928 Relations with Sheen break off.

May 1928 Publishes “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” in the
World Tomorrow
.

1930–32 Organizes the field notes that become
Mules and Men
.

May-June 1930 Works on the play
Mule Bone
, with Langston Hughes.

1931 Publishes “Hoodoo in America” in the
Journal of American Folklore
.

February 1931 Breaks with Langston Hughes over the authorship of
Mule Bone
.

July 7, 1931 Divorces Sheen.

September 1931 Writes for a theatrical revue called
Fast and Furt-ous
.

January 1932 Writes and stages a theatrical revue called
The Great Day
, first performed on January 10 on Broadway at the John Golden Theatre; works with the creative literature department of Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, to produce a concert program of Negro music.

1933 Writes “The Fiery Chariot.”

January 1933 Stages
From Sun to Sun
(a version of
Great Day
) at Rollins College.

August 1933 Publishes “The Gilded Six-Bits” in
Story
.

1934 Publishes six essays in Nancy Cunard's anthology,
Negro
.

January 1934 Goes to Bethune-Cookman College to establish a school of dramatic arts “based on pure Negro expression.”

May 1934 Publishes
Jonah's Gourd Vine
, originally titled
Big Nigger
, it is a Book-of-the-Month Club selection.

September 1934 Publishes “The Fire and the Cloud” in the
Challenge
.

November 1934
Singing Steel
(a version of
Great Day
) performed in Chicago.

January 1935 Makes an abortive attempt to study for a Ph.D. in anthropology at Columbia University on a fellowship from the Rosenwald Foundation. In fact, she seldom attends classes.

August 1935 Joins the WPA Federal Theatre Project as a “dramatic coach.”

October 1935
Mules and Men
published.

March 1936 Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study West Indian Obeah practices.

April–September 1936 In Jamaica.

September-March 1937 In Haiti; writes
Their Eyes Were Watching God
in seven weeks.

May 1937 Returns to Haiti on a renewed Guggenheim.

September 1937 Returns to the United States;
Their Eyes Were Watching God
published, September 18.

February–March 1938. Writes
Tell My Horse
; it is published the same year.

April 1938 Joins the Federal Writers Project in Florida to work on
The Florida Negro
.

1939 Publishes “Now Take Noses” in
Cordially Yours
.

June 1939 Receives an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Morgan State College.

June 27, 1939 Marries Albert Price III in Florida.

Summer 1939 Hired as a drama instructor by North Carolina College for Negroes at Durham; meets Paul Green, professor of drama, at the University of North Carolina.

November 1939
Moses, Man of the Mountain
published.

February 1940 Files for divorce from Price, though the two are reconciled briefly.

Summer 1940 Makes a folklore-collecting trip to South Carolina.

Spring–July 1941 Writes
Dust Tracks on a Road
.

July 1941 Publishes “Cock Robin, Beale Street” in the
Southern Literary Messenger
.

October 1941–January 1942 Works as a story consultant at Paramount Pictures.

July 1942 Publishes “Story in Harlem Slang” in the
American Mercury
.

September 5, 1942 Publishes a profile of Lawrence Silas in the
Saturday Evening Post
.

November 1942
Dust Tracks on a Road
published.

February 1943 Awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Race Relations for
Dust Tracks;
on the cover of the
Saturday Review
.

March 1943 Receives Howard University's Distinguished Alumni Award.

May 1943 Publishes “The ‘Pet Negro' Syndrome” in the
American Mercury
.

November 1943 Divorce from Price granted.

June 1944 Publishes “My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience” in the
Negro Digest
.

1945 Writes
Mrs. Doctor
, it is rejected by Lippincott.

March 1945 Publishes “The Rise of the Begging Joints” in the
American Mercury
.

December 1945 Publishes “Crazy for This Democracy” in the
Negro Digest
.

1947 Publishes a review of Robert Tallant's
Voodoo in New Orleans
in the
Journal of American Folklore
.

May 1947 Goes to British Honduras to research black communities in Central America; writes
Seraph on the Suwanee;
stays in Honduras until March 1948.

September 1948 Falsely accused of molesting a ten-year-old boy and arrested; case finally dismissed in March 1949.

October 1948
Seraph on the Suwanee
published.

March 1950 Publishes “Conscience of the Court” in the
Saturday Evening Post
, while working as a maid in Rivo Island, Florida.

April 1950 Publishes “What White Publishers Won't Print” in the
Saturday Evening Post
.

November 1950 Publishes “I Saw Negro Votes Peddled” in the
American Legion
magazine.

Winter 1950–51 Moves to Belle Glade, Florida.

June 1951 Publishes “Why the Negro Won't Buy Communism” in the
American Legion
magazine.

December 8, 1951 Publishes “A Negro Voter Sizes Up Taft” in the
Saturday Evening Post
.

1952 Hired by the
Pittsburgh Courier
to cover the Ruby McCollum case.

May 1956 Receives an award for “education and human relations” at Bethune-Cookman College.

June 1956 Works as a librarian at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida; fired in 1957.

1957–59 Writes a column on “Hoodoo and Black Magic” for the
Fort Pierce Chronicle
.

1958 Works as a substitute teacher at Lincoln Park Academy, Fort Pierce.

Early 1959 Suffers a stroke.

October 1959 Forced to enter the St. Lucie County Welfare Home.

January 28, 1960 Dies in the St. Lucie County Welfare Home of “hypertensive heart disease” buried in an unmarked grave in the Garden of Heavenly Rest, Fort Pierce.

August 1973 Alice Walker discovers and marks Hurston's grave.

March 1975 Walker publishes “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston,” in
Ms
., launching a Hurston revival.