Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick
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- 59,00 kr
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- 59,00 kr
Utgivarens beskrivning
From ‘one of the greatest writers of our time’ (Toni Morrison) – the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God and Barracoon – a collection of remarkable short stories from the Harlem Renaissance
With a foreword by Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage
‘Genius’ Alice Walker
‘Rigorous, convincing, dazzling’ Zadie Smith on Their Eyes Were Watching God
In 1925, college student Zora Neale Hurston – the sole black student at Barnard College, New York – was living in the city, ‘desperately striving for a toe-hold on the world.’
During this period, she began writing short works that captured the zeitgeist of African American life and transformed her into one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Nearly a century later, this singular talent is recognised as one of the most influential and revered American artists of the modern period.
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick is an outstanding collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, racism and sexism that proudly reflect African American folk culture. Brought together for the first time in one volume, they include eight of Hurston’s ‘lost’ Harlem stories, which were found in forgotten periodicals and archives.
These stories challenge conceptions of Hurston as an author of rural fiction and include gems that flash with her biting, satiric humour, as well as more serious tales reflective of the cultural currents of Hurston’s world. All are timeless classics that enrich our understanding and appreciation of this exceptional writer’s voice and her contributions to America’s literary traditions.
About the author
Zora Neale Hurston, the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, was deemed “one of the greatest writers of our time” by Toni Morrison. With the publication of Lies and Other Tall Tales, The Skill Talks Back, and What’s the Hurry, Fox? new generations will be introduced to Hurston’s legacy. She was born in Notasulga, Alabama, in 1891, and died in 1960.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This arresting collection from Hurston (Barracoon) includes eight previously unpublished works, mostly set in or featuring characters from her hometown of Eatonville, Fla. Many of the stories draw on folklore and mythology to dramatize conflicts around gender, class, and migration. In "John Redding Goes to Sea," a young boy named John dreams of leaving his small Florida town and continues to dream of leaving after he's grown up. Delayed at first by his mother, who neither understands nor approves of her son's wanderlust, and then his wife, John finally gets an opportunity, undaunted by a portentous, impending storm. In "Magnolia Flower," a young couple's stealing of time together away from the woman's overbearing, abusive father is framed as a bedtime story shared by an anthropomorphic river to a splashing brook after it disrupts the river's slumber (" Oh, well,' the river muttered, I am wide awake now, and I suppose brooks must be humored'"). Hurston ingeniously uses the cadence of her characters' speech to denote regionalism and class there's a marked difference between how her Eatonville characters speak and how her Harlem characters speak. Arranged chronologically, the collection offers an illuminating and delightful study of a canonical writer finding her rhythm.
