I Love Myself When I Am Laughingã¢â‚¬â¦and Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive

"Book Review: I Honey Myself When I Am Laughing…Then Once more When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive"

Reviewed by Joe Walters

A celebration of the life and work of a deeply undervalued literary icon, the great Zora Neale Hurston

I offset read Zora Neale Hurston in college—a short story called "The Gilded Six Bits"—and I was kind of blown away by it. There'southward this one scene where a husband returns home after piece of work and tosses his hard-earned coins at the forepart door, followed by a laugh-filled chase around the house. It's a gentle routine between husband and married woman; it's a glimpse into the joy a wedlock can concord.

The conversation in my class the side by side solar day ended upwards being an equally enjoyable time. We talked about Hurston's utilise of Black Southern dialect and the gut-wrenching twist in the latter end of the story, only one matter we didn't talk about was that Zora Neale Hurston died without a penny in her name. What we didn't talk about was how, during her lengthy prime, she still had to submit her books through an unsolicited slush pile, despite a novel that would shortly become a archetype (Their Eyes Were Watching God) and stories or essays gracing the pages of The Saturday Evening Mail service and The American Mercury. After all, she was a Black adult female writing between 1925 and 1960 about Black lives.

I didn't learn about these problems in class; I learned almost them during my recent read of I Love Myself When I Am Laughing…And Then Once again When I Am Mean and Impressive.

This volume is labeled as a "Zora Neale Hurston Reader," meaning it is both a drove of Hurston'due south work (both fiction and nonfiction) as well every bit outside essays and introductions from writers like Alice Walker and Mary Helen Washington. It'south an opportunity both to go to know how others have perceived (and go along to) perceive Hurston and to become to know Hurston through her ain work.

Here are a few pieces yous'll run across in this book:

1. An introduction by Mary Helen Washington called, "Zora Neale Hurston: A Woman One-half in Shadow"
2. An extract from Hurston's autobiography Dust Tracks on the Route
3. An excerpt from Hurston's collection of Black Southern mythology, as told past real people on stoops, Mules and Men
4. Lasting essays like "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" and "Crazy for this Republic"
5. The short story, "The Gilded Six $.25," which I savage in love with all once again during my re-read
6. An extract from her novel Moses, Homo of the Mount, which rewrites the Volume of Exodus from an African American perspective.
7. An excerpt from Their Eyes Were Watching God that chronicles the story of the offset Black man to begin a government in the all-Black town of Eatonville, Florida in the early 20^th century.
8. An afterword by Alice Walker, about visiting Hurston'south battered grave site called, "Looking for Zora"

Throughout each of Hurston's works in this reader, yous'll see what makes her special. I know I did. Beyond a dialect that drops you into each scene, she'southward also able to infuse almost each excerpt, story, or essay with humor and zeal. In that location's a particular honesty nearly her work, perchance shining brightest in the excerpt from Mules and Men, where she roams the streets of her sometime town striking conversation with the townspeople, celebrating their humor through seemingly unfiltered dialogue and their morals through the stories they tell. Nosotros have the opportunity to sit on the porch with Zora, mind closely to the people who infuse their folk tales with genuineness and meaning. Non each folk tale comes with a neat bow-tie ending, making this reader glad that Zora told the stories equally they were, honestly, as opposed to putting her own storytelling flair to it. This excerpt feels real. It feels intimate. It feels like something I desire more of. Luckily, Bookshop has me covered.

Some other sure-fire favorite of mine from this reader is her essay "Crazy for This Republic." Information technology'due south four pages of passion grounded in the fact that "They tell me this commonwealth grade of government is a wonderful thing. It has freedom, equality, justice, in curt, everything!…I desire to encounter how information technology feels," and all the same, Zora however has to put what'south in front of American leaders in the spotlight, namely The Jim Crow Laws in this essay. Afterwards offer that the Jim Crow laws must come to an finish now, "Not in another generation or and then. The Hurstons have already been waiting 80 years for that,"she goes on to equate racism to the disease it is:

"The patient has the smallpox. Segregation and things like that are the bumps and blisters on the skin, and non the disease, just evidence and symptoms of the sickness. The doctors around the bedside of the patient are badly picking bumps. Some assume that the opening of one cicatrice will cure the case. Some strangely assert that a change of climate is all that is needed to kill the virus in the blood!

"But why this sentimental over-simplification in diagnosis? Do the doctors not know annihilation about the widespread occurrence of this disease?

" …So why the waste of expert time and free energy, and further filibuster the recovery of the patient past picking him over bump by bump and blister to blister? Why non the shot of serum that will impale the thing in the claret? The bumps are symptoms. The symptoms cannot disappear until the cause is cured" (162) .

I've ever had a soft spot for Zora Neale Hurston, but the spot has gotten softer later on I Love Myself When I Am Laughing…. If you haven't read all of Hurston (or any of her), this reader is a special opportunity to come across firsthand not only how talented the undervalued Hurston was simply also the bear upon that she's left on us forever.

Publisher: Feminist Press

Paperback: 296

ISBN: 978-1936932733

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Source: https://independentbookreview.com/2020/07/07/i-love-myself-when-i-am-laughing/

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