https://www.zoranealehurston.com/resource_type/book-excerpt/Recent content in Book Excerpt on Zora Neale HurstonHugo -- gohugo.ioen-usThe Official Website of Zora Neale HurstonTue, 19 Mar 2013 04:00:00 +0000https://www.zoranealehurston.com/resource/excerpt-from-their-eyes-were-watching-god/Tue, 19 Mar 2013 04:00:00 +0000https://www.zoranealehurston.com/resource/excerpt-from-their-eyes-were-watching-god/Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget.https://www.zoranealehurston.com/resource/excerpt-from-mules-and-men/Tue, 08 Jan 2008 23:34:00 +0000https://www.zoranealehurston.com/resource/excerpt-from-mules-and-men/As I crossed the Maitland-Eatonville township line I could see a group on the store porch. I was delighted. The town had not changed. Same love of talk and song. So I drove on down there before I stopped. Yes, there was George Thomas, Calvin Daniels, Jack and Charlie Jones, Gene Brazzle, B. Moseley and “Seaboard.” Deep in a game of Florida-flip. All of those who were not actually playing were giving advice–“bet straightening” they call it.https://www.zoranealehurston.com/resource/excerpt-from-the-complete-stories/Tue, 08 Jan 2008 19:00:50 +0000https://www.zoranealehurston.com/resource/excerpt-from-the-complete-stories/Chapter One John Redding Goes to Sea The Villagers said that John Redding was a queer child. His mother thought he was too. She would shake her head sadly, and observe to John’s father: “Alf, it’s too bad our boy’s got a spell on ‘im.” The father always met this lament with indifference, if not impatience. “Aw, woman, stop dat talk ‘bout conjure. Tain’t so nohow. Ah doan want Jawn tuh git dat foolishness in him.https://www.zoranealehurston.com/resource/excerpt-from-dust-tracks-on-a-road/Tue, 03 Jan 2006 22:42:08 +0000https://www.zoranealehurston.com/resource/excerpt-from-dust-tracks-on-a-road/My Birthplace Like the dead-seeming, cold rocks, I have memories within that came out of the material that went to make me. Time and place have had their say. So you will have to know something about the time and place where I came from, in order that you may interpret the incidents and directions of my life. I was born in a Negro town. I do not mean by that the black back-side of an average town.https://www.zoranealehurston.com/resource/excerpt-from-every-tongue-got-to-confess/Tue, 01 Oct 2002 04:00:00 +0000https://www.zoranealehurston.com/resource/excerpt-from-every-tongue-got-to-confess/Why God Made Adam Last God wuz through makin' de Ian' an' de sea an' de birds an' de animals an' de fishes an' de trees befo' He made man. He wuz intendin' tuh make ‘im all along, but He put it off tuh de last cause if He had uh made Adam fust an’ let him see Him makin' all dese other things, when Eve wuz made Adam would of stood round braggin' tuh her.https://www.zoranealehurston.com/resource/excerpt-from-mule-bone/Thu, 28 Mar 1991 21:48:11 +0000https://www.zoranealehurston.com/resource/excerpt-from-mule-bone/And fall out, unfortunately, they did, thereby creating the most notorious literary quarrel in African-American cultural history, and one of the most thoroughly documented collaborations in black American literature. Langston Hughes published an account entitled “Literary Quarrel” as the penultimate chapter – indeed, almost asa coda or an afterthought – in his autobiography, The Big Sea (1940). Robert Hemenway, Zora Neale Hurston’s biographer, published a chapter in his biography entitled “Mule Bone,” and Arnold Rampersad, Hughes’s biographer, presents an equally detailed account in volume one of his The Life of Langston Hughes.https://www.zoranealehurston.com/resource/excerpt-from-seraph-on-the-sewanee/Mon, 28 Jan 1991 23:32:16 +0000https://www.zoranealehurston.com/resource/excerpt-from-seraph-on-the-sewanee/Sawley, the town, is in west Florida, on the famous Suwanee River. It is flanked on the south by the curving course of the river which Stephen Foster made famous without ever having looked upon its waters, running swift and deep through the primitive forests, and reddened by the chemicals leeched out of drinking roots. On the north, the town is flanked by cultivated fields planted to corn, cane potatoes, tobacco and small patches of cotton.https://www.zoranealehurston.com/resource/excerpt-from-moses-man-of-the-mountain/Mon, 28 Jan 1991 23:24:57 +0000https://www.zoranealehurston.com/resource/excerpt-from-moses-man-of-the-mountain/Have mercy! Lord, have mercy on my poor soul!" Women gave birth and whispered cries like this in caves and out-of-the-way places that humans didn’t usually use for birthplaces. Moses hadn’t come yet, and these were the years when Israel first made tears. Pharaoh had entered the bedrooms of Israel. The birthing beds of Hebrews were matters of state. The Hebrew womb had fallen under the heel of Pharaoh. A ruler great in his newness and new in his greatness had arisen in Egypt and he had said, “This is law.https://www.zoranealehurston.com/resource/excerpt-from-tell-my-horse/Sun, 25 Feb 1990 22:57:23 +0000https://www.zoranealehurston.com/resource/excerpt-from-tell-my-horse/The Rooster’s Nest Jamaica, British West Indies, has something else besides its mountains of majesty and its quick, green valleys. Jamaica has its moments when the land, as in St. Mary’s, thrusts out its sensuous bosom to the sea. Jamaica has its “bush.” That is, the island has more usable plants for medicinal and edible purposes than any other spot on earth. Jamaica has its Norman W. Manley, that brilliant young barrister who looks like the younger Pitt in yellow skin, and who can do as much with a jury as Darrow or Liebowitz ever did.https://www.zoranealehurston.com/resource/excerpt-from-jonah-s-gourd-vine/Mon, 22 Jan 1990 23:19:03 +0000https://www.zoranealehurston.com/resource/excerpt-from-jonah-s-gourd-vine/God was grumbling his thunder and playing the zig-zag lightning thru his fingers. Amy Crittenden came to the door of her cabin to spit out a wad of snuff. She looked up at the clouds. “Ole Massa gwinter scrub floors tuhday,” she observed to her husband who sat just outside the door, reared back in a chair. “Better call dem chaps in outa de cotton patch.” “Tain’t gwine rain,” he snorted, “you always talkin' more’n yuh know.