Zora Neale Hurston: And A History Of Southern Life (Critical Perspectives On The P) - Hardcover

Tiffany Ruby Patterson

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9781592132898: Zora Neale Hurston: And A History Of Southern Life (Critical Perspectives On The P)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1592132898 ISBN 13: 9781592132898

Publisher: Temple University Press, 2005

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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 Zora Neale Hurston and a History of Southern Life, 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 complements the fragmented historical record, using the folklore and stories to provide a full description of these people of these towns as active human subjects, shaped by history and shaping their private world. Beyond the view and domination of whites in these spaces, black people created their own codes of social behavior, honor, and justice. In Patterson's view Hurston renders her subjects faithfully and with respect for their individuality and endurance, enabling all people to envision an otherwise inaccessible world.

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From the Publisher:

The inner world of all-black towns as seen through the eyes of Zora Neale Hurston

About the Author:

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.

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