Every Tongue Got to Confess

by Zora Neale Hurston

I began to write, that is: to die a little. As soon as my Esternome began to supply me the words, I felt death. Each of his sentences (salvaged in my memory, inscribed in the notebook) distanced him from me. With the notebooks piling up, I felt they were burying him once again. Each written sentence coated a little of him, his Creole tongue, his words, his intonation, his eyes, his airs with formaldehyde

any written form of creolized language exposes the site, evidence and necessity of struggle, mirrors America’s deeply seated refusal to acknowledge its Creole identity.

Translations ask us to forget as well as imagine an original.

His world is dissolved in laughter. His “bossman,” his woman, his preacher, his jailer, his God, and himself, all must be baptized in the stream of laughter.

“The best source is where there are the least outside influences and these people being usually under-privileged are the shyest. They are most reluctant at times to reveal that which the soul lives by.”16

Man ain’t found out yet how things wuz made—he ain’t meant tuh know.

when de sun shall go down in blood and de moon shed tears lak uh weepin’ woman;

“Every tongue got to confess; everybody got to stand in judgment for theyself; every tub got to stand on its own bottom.”