eBook

Zora Neale Hurston

Tiffany Ruby Patterson

2008,2005

Overview

A historian hoping to reconstruct the social world of all-black towns or the segregated black sections of other towns in the South finds only scant traces of their existence. In Zora Neale Hurston and a History of Southern Life, Tiffany Ruby Patterson uses the ethnographic and literary work of Zora Neale Hurston to augment the few official documents, newspaper accounts, and family records that pertain to these places hidden from history. Hurston's ethnographies, plays, and fiction focused on the day-to-day life in all-black social spaces as well as \"the Negro farthest down\" in labor camps. Patterson shows how Hurston's work complements the fragmented historical record, using the folklore and stories to provide a full description of these people of these towns as active human subjects, shaped by history and shaping their private world. Beyond the view and domination of whites in these spaces, black people created their own codes of social behavior, honor, and justice. In Patterson's view Hurston renders her subjects faithfully and with respect for their individuality and endurance, enabling all people to envision an otherwise inaccessible world.

• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Subject: African Americans / African Americans -- Southern States -- Historiography / African Americans in literature / Characters / Historiography / Hurston, Zora Neale / Hurston, Zora Neale -- Characters -- African Americans / Hurston, Zora Neale -- Knowledge -- Southern States / In literature / Knowledge / Literature and folklore / Literature and folklore -- Southern States / Literature and history / Literature and history -- Southern States / SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / Southern States / Southern States -- In literature
• ISBN: 1592132898, 9781592132898, 1592132901, 9781592132904, 9781592137763, 1592137768