Zora Neale Hurston by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

We don’t learn how Hurston felt about her freelance writing. Relevant biographical information is absent. The authors devote many pages to telling you what you are about to read and cherry-picking the best quotes. This book’s long introduction is well written but not, somehow, useful. If the editors aren’t scraping the bottom of the barrel, they’re an inch or two away. A long piece about Howard University, from 1925, prints pages of statements from its board of trustees. There’s a lot of filler here, too, though - mundane essays that could have been written by anyone. In their introduction, West and Gates argue that, with this book, “Hurston takes her place as a major essayist of the 20th century.” That’s true to the extent that five or six of these essays are obvious masterpieces of the form, their sting utterly intact. A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK FROM: Oprah Daily, Business Insider, Marie Claire, The Seattle Times, Lit Hub, Bustle, and New York Magazine’s Vulture Introduction by New York Times bestselling author Henry Louis Gates Jr. For a woman that delugeth a man with letters and perfumed notes shall be called ‘pest.’”) There’s a Marcus Garvey satire, two short pieces about noses, and Hurston’s reporting, for The Pittsburgh Courier, about the 1952 trial of a wealthy Black woman who had shot her prominent white lover. Appiah have chosen reviews of her works from such important publications of her days as The Crisis, New Masses, New Republic, the New York Herald Tribune, The New York.

There’s a column of dating advice titled “The Ten Commandments of Charm.” (“Beware the temptation of the inkwell. Hurston's life and work are revealed through the reviews and essays contained in Zora Neale Hurston: Critical Perspectives Past and Present.

Zora Neale Hurston by Henry Louis Gates Jr.