Zora Neale Hurston And A History Of Southern Life

by PATTERSON, TIFFANY RUBY

• ISBN13: 9781592132904
• ISBN10: 1592132901
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-06-30
• Publisher: Temple Univ Pr

Summary

A historian hoping to reconstruct the social world of all-black towns or the segregated black sections of other towns in the South finds only scant traces of their existence. In [title] Tiffany Ruby Patterson uses the ethnographic and literary work of Zora Neale Hurston to augment the few official documents, newspaper accounts, and family records that pertain to these places hidden from history. Hurston's ethnographies, plays, and fiction focused on the day-to-day life in all-black social spaces as well as "the Negro farthest down" in labor camps. Patterson shows how Hurston's work coincides with the fragmented historical record to demonstrate the extent to which the folklore and stories provide a plausible account of these Black folk as active human subjects, shaped by history and shaping their private world. Beyond the view and domination of whites in these spaces, they created their own codes of social behavior, honor, and justice. In Patterson's view Hurston did not demean her subjects or caricature them; she rendered them faithfully and with respect for their individuality and endurance. In so doing, she enabled us to envision a world that otherwise would have been inaccessible.

Author Biography

Tiffany Ruby Patterson teaches history and Africana studies at Hamilton College and is associate editor of Black Women in United States History, a sixteen-volume series.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Prologue	1	(4)
Introduction: Rootedness-The History of Private Life	5	(14)
1 Reconstructing Past Presents	19	(13)
2 Portraits of the South: Zora Neale Hurston's Politics of Place	32	(18)
3 A Place between Home and Horror	50	(40)
4 Sex and Color in Eatonville, Florida	90	(38)
5 A Transient World of Labor	128	(31)
6 Patronage: Anatomy of a Predicament	159	(24)
Epilogue	183	(2)
Notes	185	(32)
Index	217