Mules and Men: Ways of Seeing: Anthropology. Zora on a Folksong Collecting Trip in Haiti With the publication of Mules and Men, the first book ever written by an African American on black folklore for a popular audience, Zora Neale Hurston became one of two or three historically important collectors of black folklore.
Alan Lomax, arguably the foremost expert on American folk culture, regarded the text as "the most engaging, genuine and skillfully written book in the field of folklore"(Bloom 92).With an introduction by the father of contemporary anthropology Franz Boas, its successful attempt to honestly capture the dialect of southern blacks , and its poignent and honest depictions of African American folk tales, songs, and faiths Mules and Men has come to be viewed as seminal text of American folklore. Folklore readings of the text are further complicated by various indiosyncracies within Hurston's research and recording methods. Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men and E-Project. The very next afternoon, as usual, the gregarious part of the town's population gathered on the store porch.
All the Florida flip players, all the eleven-card players. But they yelled over to me they'd be over that night in full. And they were. "Zora," George Thomas informed me, "you come to de right place if lies is what you want. Ah'm gointer lie up a nation. "Now, you gointer hear lies above suspicion," Gene added. It was a hilarious night with a pinch of everything social mixed with the story-telling. But they told stories enough for a volume by itself. Some were the European folk-tales undiluted, like Jack and the beanstalk.
Stebe Nixon was holding class meeting across the way at St. "They ain't no different from nobody else," added B. "Yeah; and hard work in de hot sun done called a many a man to preach," said a woman called Gold for no evident reason. "You know God never picked 'im up, so he went off and tot' everybody dat he was called to preach.
" "A mule, Ellis? " And my cover. Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men and E-Project. The Professor: Franz Boas Biography Franz Boas was born in Minden Germany on July 9, 1858 to a liberal jewish family.
His father Meier Boas was a sucessful merchant and his mother was a kindergarten teacher. Both of Boas' parents were filled with the "spirit of 1848" out of which the failed revolution emerged. Boas upbringing in a liberal jewish household would later inform his pioneering ideas on race and ethinicity. Physics and not anthropology was Boas' first course of study for which he was awareded a doctrorate from Kiel University in 1881. In 1887 Boas emigrated to the United States but it was not until he published that Boas truly began to make his mark as an anthropologist. Of all of Boas ideas, the construction of ethnocentrism and his desire to see cultures studied in thier own terms is by far the most influential.
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) PAL: Perspectives in American Literature - A Research and Reference Guide - An Ongoing Project © Paul P.
Reuben Chapter 9: Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) Outside Links: | ZNH: Jump at the Sun PBS DVD | ZNH Art Series | ZNH Link | The ZNH Plays at the Library of Congress | Page Links: | Primary Works | Selected Bibliography 1980-1999 | Selected Bibliography 2000-Present | Study Questions | MLA Style Citation of this Web Page | | A Brief Biography | Site Links: | Chap. 9: Index | Alphabetical List | Table Of Contents | Home Page | November 2, 2011 Source: Library of Congress (Photo by Carl Van Vechten) "I have been in sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots. Hurston, who has undergone a revival in the last twenty-five years, celebrated the courage and the struggle of African Americans in the rural South in the early years of the past century.
. | Top |Primary Works | Top |Selected Bibliography 1980-1999 Gates, Henry L. . - - -., and K.A. Holloway, Karla. Howard, Lillie P. Newson, Adele S. 1. Florida Memory - Zora Neale Hurston, the WPA in Florida, and the Cross City Turpentine Camp. The following is a compilation of sound recordings that Zora Neale Hurston created while she worked for the WPA in the 1930s. 1.
Bella Mina (Download) Bella Mina - Zora Neale Hurston 2. Crow Dance (Download) Franz Boas.