Go Gator and Muddy the Water

by Zora Neale Hurston, Pamela Bordelon, N. Hurston, Zora

Gathers local folklore, folk songs, childrens games, and essays on race, the Black church, and Black artists

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, The United States Of America, Folklore, Anthropology

199 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1999

About the author

Novels, including Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and nonfiction writings of American folklorist Zora Neale Hurston give detailed accounts of African American life in the South.

In 1925, Hurston, one of the leaders of the literary renaissance, happening in Harlem, produced the short-lived literary magazine Fire!! alongside Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman shortly before she entered Barnard College. This literary movement developed into the Harlem renaissance.

Hurston applied her Barnard ethnographic training to document African American folklore in her critically acclaimed book Mules and Men alongside fiction Their Eyes Were Watching God . She also assembled a folk-based performance dance group that recreated her Southern tableau with one performance on Broadway.

People awarded a Guggenheim fellowship to Hurston to travel to Haiti and conduct research on conjure in 1937. Her significant work ably broke into the secret societies and exposed their use of drugs to create the Vodun trance, also a subject of study for fellow dancer-anthropologist Katherine Dunham, then at the University of Chicago.

In 1954, the Pittsburgh Courier assigned Hurston, unable to sell her fiction, to cover the small-town murder trial of Ruby McCollum, the prosperous black wife of the local lottery racketeer, who had killed a racist white doctor. Hurston also contributed to Woman in the Suwanee County Jail , a book by journalist and civil rights advocate William Bradford Huie.

Reviews

[Alicia (PrettyBrownEyeReader) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gives a lot of background in Hurston's work in the Federal Writers' Project. It mixes editor's and Hurston's writing together. Would have been better if separate.

[Marsh "Bad Sci Fi" Bloom · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is great for what it is, but because the “articles” (almost blurbs really) that survive are so short they leave the reader wanting more every section. There’s no fix for that but be prepared for dabbling in the topics.

In response to some of the other reviews… I liked the format and found the background intros gave necessary and interesting context to each piece. But it’s true Hurston’s writing is only a slice of this book.

[James F · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of short writings mainly on Florida Black folklore which Hurston wrote in 1938-39 for the Florida Unit of the Federal Writers' Project, a part of the New Deal Works Progress Administration. Interesting. Preceded by a fairly long biographical introduction.

[Sarah Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story of Hurston's involvement with the Federal Writers' Project (a depression attempt to give work to writers and document histories). Hurston was decidedly qualified to be an editor and ended up functioning as one, but, because of racism, was not give the official title or pay raise. As a cultural anthropologist she had many suggestions for participants to investigate, particularly in Florida, but people did not always pay attention to her. One of her essays, "The Sanctified Church," which views African American churches in an anthropological light as having roots in African culture, was deleted from the final collection of works, perhaps because it was feared it would give offence.

[Janet C-B · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is not what I expected. Based on the title, I expected the content to be stories or folklore or whatever written by Nora Zeale Hurston. That was part of the content, but there was also extensive biographical information written by the editor, Pamela Bordelon. In addition, there was a lot of commentary by Pamela Bordelon about Hurston's writing within the context of the times. For me, the format just did not work. I have read a bit about Zora Neale Hurston's background, and I really just wanted to read more of what she had written.

[Dani Peloquin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is a collection of writings that Hurston did while working in Florida for the Federal Writers' Project. Perhaps one of the bset features of the book is that the entire first half is a biographical essay on Hurston's time working for the FWP. Pamela Bordelon, the edited of the book and author of the essay, came upon Hurston's writing by accident when she was looking to write a book about Floridian folklore. When she came across the FWP papers she noticed that the majority of the stories and interviews were in a familiar hand and written in a manner that she recognized to be Hurston's writing. After confirming that it was Hurston's notes and essays, she went to Hurston's niece and the two worked together to write an essay about Hurston's time working for the Federal Writer's Project.

The second half of the book are a sampling of Hurston's writings from the FWP. This collection only includes folklore and tales from Florida and the West Indies. However, Hurston does not limit herself to merely the stories but also includes songs and art. Each folktale is preceeded an essay by Hurston explaining the history of the folktale and the importance of it in this specific culture. Preceeding Hurston's essay, is a short paragraph written by Bordelon explaining the biographical period in which Hurston wrote each of these essays.

In regards to folktales, the stories in this collection are rare and most people have probably not heard of them. That is to say, they are not Cinderella or Beauty in the Beast. Instead, they are much more "gritty" folktales that take place on inhumane plantations or in southern prisons. All of the tales are laden with superstitions that run the gamut from enormous animals to the hazards of not exhibiting proper behavior. Also included, are variations of certain tales such as "Uncle Monday" and "Daddy Mention". This is a great asset because the reader can see how folktales have grown and been shaped over time as well as understand how each region has its own variation that caters to its own beliefs and superstitions.

Overall, I thought that this was a fantastic book (certainly one that I will be asking for for Christmas)! At times the text seemed to be light on the folktales and heavy on the essays. Such as the chapter on the "Citrus Industry" and the essay on "Turpentine". However, I did not find these essays to be a hindrance to the overall book. Instead, I thought that they added a context that the average reader would be lacking had the essays not been provided. As previously stated, there was also a large range of mediums that were included in this collection. Bordelon included Hurston's essays and stories as well as transcripts from interviews and even lyrics to traditional songs. This helped to spice up the book a great deal and showed the importance of folktales and how it permeated almost all art forms. Still, clocking in at 200 pages (with 20 of those being footnotes and an index) this book is an incredibly compact collection. Fortunately, Hurston has a few books on folklore and the FWP. If you enjoyed this book, be sure to read Mules and Men as well as Tell My Horse. Both of these books are about the religion of Hoodoo and Voodoo and the folklore and superstitions that go along with that religion. The only issue that readers may encounter is that, unlike Go Gator and Muddy the Water, both of these works are written in dialect and therefore may take some more time to understand.

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[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very interesting book, a collection of Zora Neale Hurston from the period of the Federal Writer's Project. I want to read more of her works and learn about the Florida town of Eatonville where she grew up.

[Angel]

finished. Very interesting history.

[Iesha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lovely book, very informative about Hurston and her life as a writer and anthropologist.