This expansive volume, in five parts, revises existing perceptions of Hurston, like her well-known opposition to school integration and Richard Wright’s objection to her use of African American vernacular. Essays...help to clarify Hurston’s previously misunderstood positions, rooting them in her deep appreciation for African American language and culture, her unquestionable commitment to people of color and their welfare on American soil ... Especially striking here is the breadth of Hurston’s intellect on display. She peppers her essays with such exhaustive literary, historical, biographical, political, artistic, educational, religious references that if readers were simply to follow the footnotes alone (as compiled by West and Gates), they would gain a valuable education ... Readers familiar with Hurston’s work will note the continued signatures of her voice in these essays: the sassiness, the boldness to take to task those institutions or individuals who, in her mind, would exploit lesser-informed African Americans ... You Don’t Know Us Negroes adds immeasurably to our understanding of Hurston, who was a tireless crusader in all her writing, and ahead of her time. Though she was often misunderstood, sometimes maligned and occasionally dismissed, her words make it impossible for readers to consider her anything but one of the intellectual giants of the 20th century.
... a dazzling collection of her work ... You Don’t Know Us Negroes reveals Hurston at the top of her game as an essayist, cultural critic, anthropologist and beat reporter ... Hurston is, by turn, provocative, funny, bawdy, informative and outrageous ... Hurston will make you laugh but also make you remember the bitter divide in Black America around performance, language, education and class ... But the surprising page turner is at the back of the book, a compilation of Hurston’s coverage of the Ruby McCollom murder trial ... Some of Hurston’s writing is sensationalistic, to be sure, but it’s also a riveting take of gender and race relations at the time ... Gates and West have put together a comprehensive collection that lets Hurston shine as a writer, a storyteller and an American iconoclast.
Five or six of these essays are obvious masterpieces of the form, their sting utterly intact. There’s a lot of filler here, too, though—mundane essays that, if you removed Hurston’s name, could have been written by anyone ... If the editors aren’t scraping the bottom of the barrel, they’re an inch or two away. This book’s long introduction is well written but not, somehow, useful. The authors devote many pages to telling you what you are about to read and cherry-picking the best quotes. It’s like watching a 15-minute trailer for the film you’re about to watch ... Relevant biographical information is absent ... I liked this book anyway. Reading Hurston, you always wonder what shape her dignity will take next. Her style and spark were her own.
... a garden-fresh collection of Hurston’s nonfiction cocurated by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Genevieve West. One can never have too much Zora in one’s intellectual diet. And these testimonies, tirades, reveries, and reportage—some of them never before published—forge a vibrant simulacrum of a ferociously independent, disarmingly mercurial sensibility whose complex legacy and even knottier personality we’re still trying to figure out decades after her death in 1960 at age sixty-nine. The reignited tensions of this new century likely will make her just as bemusing to contemporary readers, white and Black. But she has always made it fun for all of us to stick our heads in the game ... There’s little in Gates and West’s anthology that surpasses anything found in Their Eyes. But taken together...You Don’t Know Us Negroes reaffirms Hurston’s stature as perhaps one of the greatest, and certainly most demonstratively idiosyncratic, of America’s twentieth-century prose stylists.
You Don't Know Us Negroes...oscillates effortlessly between folklore, Hurston’s reporting, and her essays ... Readers are treated to sweeping examples of Hurston’s keen wit and her criticism of respectability politics, sexism, and classism. Throughout the collection, she takes unfaltering aim at issues not just outside the Black community but within it as well ... not light reading. It deals with complicated and raw topics that may be too intense for young readers. The collection is meant to be absorbed piece by piece, slowly, over time. It has much to offer but readers must take the time to fully read and appreciate the material.
This new collection of writings from Black author, scholar and cultural critic Zora Neale Hurston will introduce her to a new generation and give her the honor due—honor that was sometimes sparse in her lifetime—for her brilliant observations and deeply considered opinions ... Bringing Zora Neale Hurston to life again in this vibrant aggregation, Gates and West provide a laudable service to all of us. It is impossible to read Hurston’s words without recognizing not only her true genius but also her sincere embrace of her race, along with her love for her country and its best—if not always best enacted—ideals.
... a new collection of Hurston’s essays demonstrates once again how ill suited she was to the role of a solemn and respectable author, the matriarch of black American fiction. In these essays, which cover themes of race, gender and politics, her writing is characterised by an impish relish that remains both shocking and invigorating today ... These opinions can be shocking to modern readers, accustomed as we are now to a more heightened sensitivity to racial prejudice ... She was certainly witty, convivial and a great phrasemaker. But even these qualities do not make her scepticism about racial integration easy to digest ... This new collection shows that Hurston’s essays also deserve great acclaim. She was an iconoclast on matters of race, but this came out of a reverence for black dignity.
The essays demonstrate the wit of a pioneering star of the Black literary circle ... Her irreverence towards received opinions and opinion-makers is one of the delights of Hurston’s shtick ... Fierce, insightful and often devilishly funny, her satirical writing is particularly biting ... Hurston’s anthropological reportage seems now a precursor of the New Journalism later exemplified by Joan Didion ... the depth and power of Hurston’s prose continues to dazzle.
Hurston’s spats with leading male cultural and political luminaries, which exhibited her trademark blend of Southern eloquence and venom, are among the most engaging pieces ... Hurston slipped with ease between folklorist and anthropologist ... The essays in You Don’t Know Us Negroes, served well by careful notes, allow Hurston to emerge as contradictory, uneven, lively and brilliant.
You Don’t Know Us Negroes isn’t a book to take – or read – lightly ... From the beginning of the introduction to the very last words on McCollum, this book demands that readers stop and think about what’s been said. It’s natural that you would anyhow: much of what author Zora Neale Hurston observed in her day is still relevant now ... What’s unexpected – and very delightful – is Hurston’s voice. Some of these stories ring with a wonderful sense of sarcasm that tells you everything you need to know about Hurston’s mind-set. Some tales ache with frustration. Others spark like lightning in a jar ... This is a carry-it-everywhere-with-you kind of book, perfect for times when you need some introspection as diversion. You Don’t Know Us Negroes is like that, and that’s just the way it is.
... a must read, even though the collection is daunting. At four hundred pages, with an additional fifty pages of notes, the book isn’t attempting to be easily digestible in size or scope. Split into five sections, some essays read very quickly ... Those in Part One: On the Folk and Part Five: The Trial of Ruby McCollum have the same snap and speed as Hurston’s fiction. The other three sections—On Art and Such; On Race and Gender; On Politics—are headier works and reveal an observant and critical mind at work at the turn of the Harlem Renaissance that has not been given the credit she is due. Hurston should be lauded in the same way as Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, but she often isn't ... Those who teach read and teach Hurston will likely fall in love with this book, as I did, but even if you’ve never encountered her, You Don’t Know Us Negroes is an important read that chronicles a time and place in America that is most often viewed through the white, male lens. Thank heavens Hurston gives us another perspective.
Throughout, Hurston’s use of allegory and metaphor is rife, but does not detract from her focused and pointed arguments ... Hurston’s voice rings clear from essay to essay, and in her quest to 'reclaim traditional Black culture' she does not temper her criticism of various individuals or organizations ... an expansive and engaging collection that centers the challenging questions revealed when Hurston lifts the veil, as well as her smart and often-defiant responses. In every essay, Hurston’s unique voice swells with 'race pride.' This collection chronicles an influential writer’s thoughts and reactions over the span of multiple decades, and Hurston scholars and casual readers alike will find it an illuminating compilation.
Reading these essays requires letting go of the agonizing business of saving Hurston from her politics, as though the writer we credit with knowing so much of her own Negro mind just so happened to forget herself on occasions where the takes haven’t aged as well as we’d prefer ... Hurston’s writing searches for individuals instead of stock types. She offers readings of the judge, of the lawyers, and of the gawkers from the colored parts of their towns who, like Hurston, were restricted to the courtroom’s balcony.
Editors Gates and West have created a volume that enables readers both steeped in and new to Hurston to discover her acerbic wit, her crisp prose, and the breadth of her artistic ability and interests. From trial coverage to folktales, explorations of spirituals and debacles at Howard University, Hurston’s inquiries provide an opportunity to experience the evolution of her work in context with her better-known writings ... This is an invaluable nonfiction companion to the collection of Hurston’s short stories, Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick (2020).
... showstopping ... Whether reporting on the injustices of the criminal justice system, poking holes in the pomposity of Marcus Garvey, or drawing a character sketch of a Black Florida cattle rancher, Hurston’s work stands out for its wit and range. This will delight her fans, and should garner her some new ones.
