"The inside light" : new critical essays on Zora Neale Hurston

cover image

Where to find it

Davis Library (8th floor)

Call Number
PS3515.U789 Z745 2010
Status
Available

Stone Center Library

Call Number
PS3515.U789 Z745 2010 c. 2
Status
Available

Authors, etc.

Names:

Summary

This exploration of Zora Neale Hurston's life and work draws on a wealth of newly discovered information and manuscripts that bring new dimensions of her writing to light.

"The Inside Light": New Critical Essays on Zora Neale Hurston caps a decade of resurgent popularity and critical interest in Hurston to offer the most insightful critical analysis of her work to date. Encompassing all of Hurston's writings--fiction, folklore manuscripts, drama, correspondence--it fully reaffirms the legacy of this phenomenal writer, whom The Color Purple 's Alice Walker called "A Genius of the South."

"The Inside Light" offers 20 critical essays covering the breadth of Hurston's writing, including her poetry, which up to now has received little attention. Essays throughout are informed by revealing new research, previously unseen manuscripts, and even film clips of Hurston. The book also focuses on aspects of Hurston's life and work that remain controversial, including her stance on desegregation, her relationships with Charlotte Mason, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright, and the veracity of her autobiography, Dust Tracks On a Road .

Contents

  • Acknowledgments p. xi
  • Introduction p. xiii Deborah G. Plant
  • Prefatory Poem: In a Time Zora p. xvii E. Ethelbert Miller
  • To Paint a Woman Black and Female at the Turn of the 20th Century?
  • Zora Neale Hurston: A Black White-Collar Working Woman p. 3 Piper G. Huguley-Riggins
  • Zora Neale Hurston: Pioneering Social Scientist p. 15 Lucy Anne Hurston
  • Masculinity in Hurston's Texts p. 23 Kersuze Simeon-Jones
  • Hollywood Wants a Cracker: Zora Neale Hurston and Studio Narrative Culture p. 33 Elizabeth Binggeli
  • A Renaissance Woman: Poetics, Performance, Photography, and Film?
  • Zora Neale Hurston's Folk Choreography p. 53 Anthea Kraut
  • Modernist Visions of"Self"within Community: Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and James Van Der Zee's Home in Harlem Photographs p. 65 Emily M. Hinnov
  • Hurston, Toomer, and the Dream of a Negro Theatre p. 79 John Lowe
  • Zora Neale Hurston and the Possibility of Poetry p. 93 Phyllis McEwen
  • A Voice of the South?
  • "Beholding'A Great Tree in Leaf": Eros, Nature, and the Visionary in Their Eyes Were Watching God p. 103 Gurleen Grewal
  • Zora Neale Hurston: Environmentalist in Southern Literature p. 113 Scott Hicks
  • Narrative Displacement: The Symbolic Burden of Disability in Zora Neale Hurston's Seraph on the Suwanee p. 127 Michelle Jarman
  • Zora Neale Hurston and the Challenge of Black Atlantic Identity p. 139 Shirley Toland-Dix
  • Premonition: Peering through Time and into Hurricane Katrina p. 153 Dawood H. Sultan and Deanna J. Wathington
  • The Legacy of Zora Neale Hurston in the 21st Century?
  • "That Man in the Gutter Is the God-Maker": Zora Neale Hurston's Philosophy of Culture p. 165 Catherine A. John
  • Dear Zora: Letters from the New Literati p. 181 Kendra Nicole Bryant
  • Their Eyes Were Watching God: The Novel, the Film-An Interview with Valerie Boyd p. 197 Deborah G. Plant
  • De-Lionizing Zora Neale Hurston? p. 203 Linda Tavernier-Almada
  • "A Child Cannot Be Taught by Anyone Who Despises Him": Hurston versus Court-Ordered School Integration p. 215 Lynn Moylan
  • The Color Line and the Hem Line: Problem or Promise of a Post-Racial, Post-Gendered America p. 225 A. Giselle Jones-Jones
  • Organic Universalism in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God p. 239 Joanne M. Braxton
  • Conclusion p. 255 Deborah G. Plant
  • Afterword: We Be Theorizin p. 263 Kendra Nicole Bryant
  • Index p. 267
  • About the Editor and Contributors p. 279

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