Zora Neale Hurston

In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation's history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo's firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave...

An Instant New York Times and Indie Bestseller!

In the first middle grade offering from Zora Neale Hurston and Ibram X. Kendi, young readers are introduced to the remarkable and true-life story of Cudjo Lewis, one of the last survivors of the Atlantic human trade, in an adaptation of the internationally bestselling and critically acclaimed Barracoon.

This is the life story of Cudjo Lewis, as told by himself.

Of

...

The acclaimed author of Their Eyes Were Watching God relates her experiences as an African American woman in early-twentieth-century America.

In this autobiographical essay, author Zora Neale Hurston recounts episodes from her childhood in different communities in Florida: Eatonville and Jacksonville. She reflects on what those experiences showed her about race, identity, and feeling different.

“How It Feels to Be...

The author recounts her experiences as an initiate into the voodoo practices of Haiti and Jamaica in the 1930s.

In this 1939 novel based on the familiar story of the Exodus, Zora Neale Hurston blends the Moses of the Old Testament with the Moses of black folklore and song to create a compelling allegory of power, redemption, and faith. Narrated in a mixture of biblical rhetoric, black dialect, and colloquial English, Hurston traces Moses's life from the day he is launched into the Nile river in a reed basket, to his development as a great magician, to his transformation...

“Magnolia Flower” follows a young Afro Indigenous girl who longs for freedom.

"Maybe, now, we used-to-be black African folks can be of some help to our brothers and sisters who have always been white. You will take another look at us and say that we are still black and, ethnologically speaking, you will be right. But nationally and culturally, we are as white as the next one. We have put our labor and our blood into the common causes for a long time. We have given the rest of the nation song and laughter. Maybe now, in this...

An aspect of the race problem ignored by zealous reformers: The "Pet Negro" system.

From the prolific Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston, 'Spunk' and 'Sweat' are thought-provoking short stories set in the heart of African-American communities following the civil war. 'Spunk', first published in 1925, is set in an all-Black community in rural America and poses the question of whether moral strength is more powerful than physical strength. Spunk Banks is described as a 'giant'. He is unafraid of anything or anyone, but...

Every Tongue Got to Confess is an extensive volume of African American folklore that Zora Neale Hurston collected on her travels through the Gulf States in the late 1920s. The bittersweet and often hilarious tales -- which range from longer narratives about God, the Devil, white folk, and mistaken identity to witty one-liners -- reveal attitudes about faith, love, family, slavery, race, and community. Together, this collection of nearly 500 folktales...