Will add more quotes when I reread. For now, here are quotes from Written By Herself.I think this book is the best of all Hurston's works that I've read, and shows her strengths as a writer and storyteller.p. 36"In the classroom I got along splendidly. The only difficulty was that I was rated as sassy. I just had to talk back at established authority and that established authority hated backtalk worse than barbed-wire pie. My immediate teachers were enthusiastic about me. It was the guardians of study-hour and prayer meetings who felt that their burden was extra hard to bear."Must now remember to use the phrase "worse than barbed-wire pie" somewhere; it's too good not to quote.40 - "I will not go so far as to say that I was poorly dressed, for that would be bragging. The best I can say is that I could not be arrested for indecent exposure." Another example of why she is so wonderfully quotable, p. 43:"...They did not know of the way an average Southern child, white or black, is raised on simile and invective. They know how to call names. It is an everyday affair to hear somebody called a mullet-headed, mule-eared, wall-eyed, hog-nosed, 'gator-faced, shad-mouthed, screw-necked, goat-belled, puzzle-gutted, camel-backed, butt-sprung, battle-hammed, knock-kneed, razor-legged, box-ankled, shovel-footed, unmated so and so! Eyes looking like skint-ginny nuts, and mouth looking like a dishpan full of broke-up crockery! They can tell you in simile exactly how you walk and smell. They can furnish a picture gallery of your ancestors, and a notion of what your children will be like. What ought to happen to you is full of images and flavor. Since that stratum of the Southern population is not given to book-reading, they take their comparisons right out of the barnyard and the woods. When they get through with you, you and your whole family look like an acre of totem-poles."44 - "The wish to be back in school had never left me. But alone by myself and feeling it over, I was scared. Before the job I had been lonely; I had been bare and bony of comfort and love. Working with these people I had been sitting by a warm fire for a year and a half and gotten used to the feel of peace. Now I was to take up my pilgrim's stick and go outside again."44 - "But his looks only drew my eyes in the beginning. I did not fall in love with him just for that. He had a fine mind and that intrigued me. When a man keeps beating me to the draw mentally, he begins to get glamorous."p.51:"I wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God in Haiti. It was dammed up in me, and I wrote it under internal pressure in seven weeks. I wish I could write it again. In fact, I regret all of my books. It is one of the tragedies of life that one cannot have all the wisdom one is ever to possess in the beginning. Perhaps , it is just as well to be rash and foolish for a while. If all writers were too wise, perhaps no books would be written at all."Dust Tracks; Chapter: Concert, additional chapter from Folklore, Memoirs, & Other Writings p. 804: "On January 10, 1932, I presented a Negro Folk Concert at the John Golden Theater in New York.I am not a singer, a dancer, nor even a musician. I was, therefore, seeking no reputation in either field. I did the concert because I knew that nowhere had the general public ever heard Negro music as done by Negroes. There had been numerous concerts of Negro spirituals by famous Negro singers, but none as it was done by, let us say, Macedonia Baptist Church. They had been tampered with by musicians, and had their faces lifted to the degree that when real Negroes heard them, they sat back and listened just like white audiences did. It was just as strange to them as to the Swedes, for example. Beautiful songs and arrangements but going under the wrong titles....my years of research accented this situation inside of me and trouble me. Was the real voice of my people never to be heard? This ersatz Negro music was getting on. It was like the story from Hans Christian Anderson where the shadow became a man.That would not have been important if the arrangements had been better music than the originals, but they were not."p 805: "...They were highly flavored with Bach and Brahms, and Gregorian chants, but why drag them in? It seemed to me a determined effort to squeeze all of the rich black juice out of the songs and present a sort of musical octoroon to the public. Like some more "passing for white."p 808: "But this I do know, that people became very much alive to West Indian dancing and work songs. I have heard myself over the air dozens of times and felt the influence of that concert running through what has been done since."
Characters - On a scale of one to five, I would rate the characters in Dust Tracks on A Road a three. Not all of the characters were well described and I believe that this was only because the main character was the narrator as well. I believe some things about each character were left out therefore leaving most characters underdeveloped. I did enjoy reading about these characters, they were fun and likable. The characters were definitely believable the author was writing about real people that had been in and influenced her life. “I wanted family love and peace and a resting place. I wanted books and school. When I saw more fortunate people of my own age on their way to school, I would cry inside and be depressed for days, until I learned how to mash down on my feelings and numb them for a spell. I felt crowded in on, and hope was beginning to waver.” (Hurston 97) This quote shows the author, narrator, and main character being true to herself. It gives raw emotion and ideas, really giving a picture of how she’s ultimately feeling at that moment. This is a consistent trait of Hurston’s writing all throughout this story. Setting – On a scale of one to five, I would rate the setting a four. The setting is very important, the story starts in Hurston’s hometown and that is where she is brought up as a small child before her mother dies. In the beginning the time seems to drag especially the time she spends in Jacksonville while at school. The setting does affect the story because each new setting represents a different part or season of Zora’s life. I don’t think that the story could have taken place in another time period because it would change the whole story. The time period where African Americans were not fully seen as equal to white people, Zora wouldn’t have encountered some of the trials and tribulations she did in her life. “I was born in a Negro town. I do not mean by that the black back-side of an average town. Eatonville, Florida, is, and was at the time of my birth, a pure Negro town-charter, mayor, council, town marshal and all. It was not the first Negro community in America, but it was the first to be incorporated, the first attempt at organized self-government on the part of Negroes in America.” (Hurston 1) This quote exemplifies the idea that African American’s were still not equal with all people and that they worked hard to earn and accomplish things. Plot – On a scale of one to five, I would rate the plot a four. This story was told in chronological order because it’s about Hurston’s life. She writes this story to tell about her life so she decided to start in the beginning. “The next day or so a Mrs. Neale, a friend of Mama’s, came in and reminded her that she had promised to let her name the baby in case it was a girl. She had picked up a name somewhere which she thought was very pretty. Perhaps, she had read it somewhere, or somebody back in those woods was smoking Turkish cigars.” (Hurston 21) She begins with her birth, explaining where and how she was born as well as her name came along, and moves forward from that. Hurston longs to explore the world and be out on her own, she describes her struggle to obtain and education from Howard University and Bernard College and also to establish a self-supporting writing career. Hurston also discusses her views on love, religion, race, and politics. Theme – On a scale of one to five, I would rate the theme a three. The book doesn’t necessarily have a set theme. Hurston is just trying to describe her life so that readers may have a greater understanding of her and her background. The book does support a theme of African American culture. Another theme could be Zora’s struggle to obtain her college education and build a career. “I turned in written work and answered questions like everyone else, but he took no notice of me particularly until one night in the study of English poets he read “Kubla Khan” by Smauel Taylor Coleridge.” (Hurston 123) This quote portrays the struggle that Hurston endured while in college, she was often looked over and not taken seriously. No one thought that she would achieve very much educationally. Personal Response – I found this book intriguing; I loved learning more about her life. I had already read a book by Zora Neale Hurston so learning more about her was a fun experience and I was able to realize why she wrote some things the way she did. I would recommend this book to a friend. I believe that others would benefit from learning more about Hurston’s life to be able to see what has made her who she was.
What do You think about Dust Tracks On A Road (2006)?
"There is something wonderful to behold just ahead. Let's go see what it is." - Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a RoadI was a bit apprehensive about reading this book as I’ve read about the tragedies Zora Neale Hurston experienced in her life. This, however, turned out to be one of the most marvelous autobiographies I have ever read and more inspirational than discouraging.I loved reading about Hurston’s childhood; she was such a precocious and inquisitive child who could easily have been stifled creatively by the culture she lived in, a culture and society that did not encourage book-reading or learning, yet found ways to grow her creativity and imagination. Her adventures and experiences as an adult were also interesting. I loved her opinionated, unapologetic personality. Her ideas about race and religion were probably considered radical in those days; she was definitely way ahead of her time.And her writing, wow! She was adept at writing using different literary styles and idiomatic expressions, and she also respected the Southern dialect and people, therefore her understanding for the need of their different linguistic expression came across clearly in her writing and thought process. Her writing is also witty and she's also a wonderful storyteller. Her autobiography has several stories and folktales included. Also, she dislikes math as much as I do, as is evidenced by the following quote: "I did not do well in mathematics. Why should A minus B? Who the devil was X anyway?" I concur!Her anthropology background and her positive experiences with white people made her see people beyond the veil of race, and instead just see the person. I thought that was wonderful.I would unquestionably invite Zora Neale Hurston to my fantasy literary dinner party. She’s definitely inspirational. "My search for knowledge of things took me into many strange places and adventures." - Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road
—Rowena
Four years after writing Janie Mae’s journey in Their Eyes, Zora Neale Hurston was persuaded by her editor, J. B. Lippincott, to write her autobiography. The result was Dust Tracks on A Road, the partly fictionalized tale of a persona named Zora and her geographical, spiritual, and intellectual journey from Eatonville to New York and beyond. Their Eyes and Dust Tracks contain pronounced similarities in themes and in plot, and a comparison illuminates Hurston’s use of the journey motif. A restless desire to move and learn drives both Janie and Zora beyond the worlds that stifle them and toward the realization of their uncompromised, essential selves. The tenacity to seek new experiences and risk failure in increasingly more complex arenas comes naturally to both women. In Their Eyes, Janie defines herself by seeking her dream of fulfilling relationships. In Dust Tracks, Zora sees each person she encounters as a new stage in her journey, and she defines herself through the magnifying glass of these relationships. In each chapter of her autobiography, Hurston offers thoughts about the personal relationships she remembers, all of which serve to deepen her awareness of her skills, her needs, and herself."While I am still far below the allotted span of time, and notwithstanding, I feel that I have lived. I have the joy and pain of strong friendships. I have served and been served. I have made enemies of which I am not ashamed. I have been faithless, and then I have been faithful and steadfast until the blood ran down into my shoes…What waits for me in the future? I do not know. I cannot even imagine, and I am glad for that. But already, I have touched the four corners of the horizon, for from hard searching it seems to me that tears and laughter, love and hate, make up the sum of life."--Dust Tracks on A Road, Zora Neale Hurston
—Erin
This was wonderful. ZNH tells her own story very engagingly, with plenty of reflections on race, self-determination, American culture, religion, friendship, publishing, the works. She's acerbic in her observations; I kept on writing them down. At the time she wrote the autobiography, she was at the height of her success; a few years later she was out of the public eye, and she ended her life in poverty and obscurity, which is a terrible shame. Well, no one should die alone and impoverished, though.Here are her words on poverty: There is something about poverty that smells like death. Dead dreams dropping off the heart like leaves in a dry season and rotting around the feet; impulses smothered too long in the fetid air of underground caves. The soul lives in a sickly air. People can be slave-ships in shoes.and on justice:I too yearn for universal justice, but how to bring it about is another thing. It is such a complicated thing, for justice, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. There is universal agreement of the principle, but the application brings on the fight.But there were lighthearted moments, too, like this, from her childhood, which I shared on Livejournal:I used to take a seat on top of the gate post and watch the world go by. One way to Orlando ran past my house, so the carriages and cars would pass before me. The movement made me glad to see it. Often the white travelers would hail me, but more often I hailed them, and asked, "Don't you want me to go a piece of the way with you?"They always did. I know now that I must have caused a great deal of amusement among them, but my self-assurance must have carried the point, for I was always invited to come along. I'd ride up the road for perhaps a half mile, then walk back.I recommend it, especially if you're interested in ZNH's writing. It's both entertaining and thought provoking.
—Francesca Forrest
