Zora Neale Hurston

Hello.

Today I had book club where we discussed Zora Neale Hurston, previously Zora Neal Lee Hurston, but she dropped the Lee and added an E to Neal, probably due to her 3 marriages. She was from Georgia, and moved down here to Seminole county/Maitland area. I can't remember the name of the "ville" but there's a week of devotion to this author in the form of a festival, where the University of Central Florida and local libraries work together to show the movie, have people read the books, have a walking tour of (Eatonville! That's it.) and other fun literary stuff. I guess the movie has Halle Berry playing Janie in Their Eyes Were Fixed on God, which was her most popular novel and the movie's story, and also most like Zora's own life. Amy, the librarian who leads my writing group, and also who led our book club today, praises Hurston as her most favorite black female writer---even more than Toni Morrison! Can you even believe that?? (Big intake of breath.) Anyway, the book is great. It's written, as most of Hurston's books, in a southern black dialect that some at-that-time modern black people would have loved to see disappear, right along with the reality that was slavery. The story illustrates the very real culture and events depicting life for blacks at the end of slavery. This town, that is still here in the county that I happen to have just moved to 6 months ago, is declared as the first all-black city, with a black mayor, etc, in the history of the country. People from all the southern states moved down here to live in it. Hurston's character, Janie, comes from Georgia, while Hurston's real-life people claim to come from Alabama. The story basically goes along through Janie's 3 marriages. Everything about Janie is daring for that time period. The book, and her other works, did not do well before she died in 1960. It took time for the non-feminist world to catch up to her. University classes regularly read this book as a window into Florida and southern and black history. No coincidence then that this author is praised around here in February every year, as the shortest month of the year is declared Black History Month. There's a bone for "their community." Proof that racism is dead.

The book club discussion frequently went back to the "dialect" and the "black accent" and some readers absolutely could not read past page one, and chose to download the audio book onto their devices. Whether the club members were from the south or not, most agreed that hearing the words as they are written is much easier to understand than reading them off of a page. A few times, I found myself wondering if the discussion were of a southern white woman of that time period, and that white woman was married controversially 3 times, if the discussion would go where it went. I don't think any of these women are intentionally racist,  but I could see their, and my own, white privilege flag waving proudly. What I mean to say is, if a black woman walked into the room, or had stood at the doorway and considered entering, she would have heard what I sensed, and upon noticing the black woman, as light or as dark as you please, all of us would have back-pedaled a little and felt the need to explain their previous spoken sentences.

There was an interesting mix of feminist, girl-power praise for the book, which, like I said, was way ahead of it's time, black, brown, yellow or white, off-set by quite an opposite view. Some thought the book created fewer options for women and situations that boxed Janie in too much. It was written in a time when officially blacks and whites should be able to go to school together and pee in the same toilets. But unofficially, women were not legally allowed to vote, denied ownership of property and definitely living a stranger in a man's world. One could argue that at that time no women living in America or anywhere else could imagine the benefits I enjoy today as a woman. Not in their wildest dreams.

Or maybe I am wrong. Maybe Flora Neale Hurston dreamed of a time when a woman could start and own a business, decide to get married or to not, decide whether or not she would have children, or make all kinds of decisions about her body freely, work the same business and education jobs as any man, and travel and spend her money as she damn well wished. Perhaps she did imagine a world where the framed boxes white men put everything and everyone into would fall and all people could decide for themselves how they wanted to live their lives. I wonder if she had the capacity to imagine every person valuing every other kind of person as a human being and respected and loved them as equal, and that respect and love translated into laws and governments of equality. Hmm.

zorafestival.org

Junot Diaz (!!!) Coming to Bloomington...

Becoming a Writer By Junot Diaz

From Oprah website, http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Junot-Diaz-Talks-About-What-Made-Him-Become-a-Writer

Photo: Nancy Crampton

"It wasn't that I couldn't write. I wrote every day. I actually worked really hard at writing. At my desk by 7 A.M., would work a full eight and more. Scribbled at the dinner table, in bed, on the toilet, on the No. 6 train, at Shea Stadium. I did everything I could. But none of it worked. My novel, which I had started with such hope shortly after publishing my first book of stories, wouldn't budge past the 75-page mark. Nothing I wrote past page 75 made any kind of sense. Nothing. Which would have been fine if the first 75 pages hadn't been pretty damn cool. But they were cool, showed a lot of promise. Would also have been fine if I could have just jumped to something else. But I couldn't. All the other novels I tried sucked worse than the stalled one, and even more disturbing, I seemed to have lost the ability to write short stories. It was like I had somehow slipped into a No-Writing Twilight Zone and I couldn't find an exit. Like I'd been chained to the sinking ship of those 75 pages and there was no key and no patching the hole in the hull. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote, but nothing I produced was worth a damn.

Want to talk about stubborn? I kept at it for five straight years. Five damn years. Every day failing for five years?..."

(follow link above to read more.)

Junot Díaz's novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead) won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008.

Favorite Author: Toni Morrison

February 18 marks the birthday of beloved American novelist Toni Morrison. To celebrate not only the day, but also her life and legacy, here are seven key quotations from the author's work. (Biographile)

The Bluest Eye (1969)
"There is really nothing more to say — except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how."

Song of Solomon (1977)
"Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can't nobody fly with all that shit. Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down."

"If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it."

Tar Baby (1981)
"At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don't need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens — that letting go — you let go because you can."

Various Interviews and Speeches
"Anger... it's a paralyzing emotion... you can't get anything done. People sort of think it's an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling — I don't think it's any of that — it's helpless... it's absence of control — and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers — and I need clarity, in order to write — and anger doesn't provide any of that — I have no use for it whatsoever. I can feel melancholy, and I can feel full of regret, but anger is something that is useful to the people who watch it... it's not useful to me." From an interview with Don Swaim (1987)

"I believe that one of the principle ways in which we acquire, hold, and digest information, is via narrative — so I hope you will understand when the remarks I make begin with the first sentence of our childhood — that we all remember — the phrase: 'Once upon a time.'" From her Nobel Prize Lecture (1993)

"Passion is never enough; neither is skill. But try. For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul." From her Nobel Prize Lecture (1993)

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2013

Alice Munro

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2013 was awarded to Alice Munro "master of the contemporary short story".

http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=1973

 

Austin Clarke: Canadian Author, born in Barbados

The Danger of the Single Story

This is a fantastic TED talk! I can't wait to read her book, The Thing Around Your Neck. Here's the link:

http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html