Book Review: Speak, So You can Speak Again

Whether you are familiar with Zora Neale Hurston's extensive body of work or if this biography is your first exposure to the talented African-American author, anthropologist, folklorist, poet, and playwright, the book Speak, So You Can Speak Again will leave you feeling like you have gotten to know this most resourceful and unconventional Harlem Renaissance woman intimately.

For getting to know Zora Neale Hurston is exactly what happens when you delve into this slim, 32-page volume. Written by Associate Professor Lucy Anne Hurston, niece of Zora Neale Hurston, and in collaboration with the estate of Zora Neale Hurston, Speak, So You Can Speak Again is an interactive biography. Each page contains not only intriguing photographic and historical information about Hurston, but also tactile pieces of Hurston's literary life. With each page turned, readers may hold in their hands painstakingly-created reproductions of Hurston's personal letters, research, published plays and stories. There are even a couple of reproductions of holiday cards she created for friends.

Arguably the best interactive part of the biography, and worth the price of the book alone, is an audio CD that features interview excerpts and folk songs sung by Zora Neale Hurston.

As the first line of the introduction so succinctly states, "Zora Neale Hurston ignites passion."  And so she does.

From her humble beginnings growing up in Eatonville, FL, the first, self-governed black town in the country, to her education at Barnard College where she earned her B.A. in anthropology, through her extensive travels and research in the Caribbean and friendships with such notable literary luminaries as Langston Hughes, Speak, So You Can Speak Again draws an fascinating picture of a free-spirited woman, hungry for knowledge and experiences few  of her day would have dreamed of pursuing.

Although she published several novels in her lifetime and received numerous awards and recognitions, Zora Neale Hurston is best known for her novel, "Their Eyes Were Watching God," which draws heavily from her research in Haiti.

While lauded by Howard University poet and scholar Sterling Brown for her forté in capturing and authentically recreating folk-speech, a direct by-product of her anthropological and folklorist research, Hurston's work was not universally appreciated, and she was oft-times criticized for playing to white stereotypes of African American language and culture.

Despite her many accomplishments, the thrice-married Hurston's often lived a hand-to-mouth existence. Her last days were spent in the St. Lucie County welfare home and her final resting place is an unmarked grave in Fort Pierce, Florida. Thirteen years after her 1960 death, author Alice Walker added an engraved stone.

Thanks to Lucy Anne Hurston, Walker, and other admirers, Zora Neale Hurston's work is enjoying a resurgence and a new audience of young readers. Speak, So You Can Speak Again is an excellent companion piece to Zora Neale Hurston's remarkable body of work.

Lucy Anne Hurston, niece of noted Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston and an associate professor of Sociology at Manchester Community College, will beabout "Speak, So You can Speak Again: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston" as part of the 's Eaton-Dimock-King Author Series on Wednesday, Feb. 23, 7:30 p.m.-9 p.m. 

Registration is required and can be made by calling the library at 860-871-3620 or by e-mailing Library Director Barbara Butler at bbutler@tolland.org.

The lecture series, sponsored by the library and the Tolland Public Library Foundation, is funded by the Phoebe Dimock King and Elizabeth C. King Eaton Endowment.