One of the most acclaimed artists of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston was a gifted novelist, playwright, and essayist. Drawn from three decades of her work, this anthology showcases her development as a writer, from her early pieces expounding on the beauty and precision of African American art to some of her final published works.
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.
