Big Ole' Lies

by

Nicki Leone

Once upon a time, a long, long (looooong) time ago, when I was still young even if the world was not, I was spending an afternoon exploring the dusty shelves of an old used bookstore when I came across a postcard of a laughing black woman in a floppy straw hat and dusty dress. The caption under her photo said “I love myself when I am laughing . . . and then again when I am looking mean and impressive.” The woman’s smile, and the sentiment, appealed to me greatly. I became suddenly enamored of Zora Neale Hurston.

I was rather late in my discovery, of course. Zora Neale Hurston’s reputation had been enjoying resurgence thanks to the enthusiasm of contemporary African American writers like Alice Walker and Toni Morrison—who tended to adore her—which is why there was even a postcard of her in a bookshop in the first place. And really, what’s not to adore? “Zora was funny, irreverent (she was the first to call the Harlem Renaissance literari the “niggerati”), good-looking, sexy.” writes Walker.

She was indeed. But my own personal interest in her might have ended with the postcard if it wasn’t for the fact that on the shelf next to it I found a slightly abused copy of Hurston’s ground-breaking book (although it would be decades before anyone realized just how ground-breaking it was) Mules and Men. It was a collection of black folk tales and “big old lies”, as Hurston called them, and I have never read anything like them.

Myths and folktales had formed an important part of my reading life ever since my mother gave me a copy of Edith Hamilton’s Mythology as a kid. On my bookshelf at the time were collections of Greek and Roman myths, Chinese fairy tales, Indian myths, Arthurian legends, Irish folktales, even a book of stories from Ancient Egypt. I knew all about Paul Bunyon and Pecos Bill and B’rer Rabbit. Whenever I came across a new collection of folktales, I snatched it up.

As a child, of course, I was interested in myths because they were just such good stories. But by the time I found Zora, I had begun to realize that there was more to the tales than a simple good yarn. Myths and folktales form part of the unacknowledged fabric of daily life in every culture. They are symbols and illustrations of our collective culture—something that must give one pause when you consider that one of the most pervasive of American folktales is that of Paul Bunyon—the man who is bigger, stronger and greater; a giant among smaller beings. Largely ignored until recently are the folktales of other cultures that happen to exist in the same country as Paul Bunyan. Native American myths, Hispanic stories, and especially African American tales all walk in the same hills and valleys as big Paul, largely unnoticed in his substantial shadow.

But not always. There have always been a few folklorists and anthropologists dedicated to saving the stories of ignored, repressed and even endangered cultures. One of the earliest, and greatest, was the sexy, vivacious Zora Neale Hurston, who in the 1920s traveled up and down the gulf coast, and as far as Haiti in search of African American myths and legends. Mules and Men was the only folktale collection she published during her lifetime, a  series of tales centered around the theme of African Americans and work (the most famous of which, the John Henry stories, rival Paul Bunyan in popularity). But Mules and Men represented only a tithe of what she planned to be a seven-volume collection of African American folklore. It would be eighty years after Mules and Men, and over forty years after Hurston died, forgotten and buried in an unmarked grave, that a new and more comprehensive volume of her story collection would at last be released: Every Tongue Got to Confess: A Collection of Negro Folktales from the Gulf States.

Hurston was an amazing, almost mythical person herself.  Born in 1891, (although she always claimed it was ten years later), she grew up in Etonville, an all-black township in Florida. She spent time in a traveling theatrical group before going to college, and ended up after much persistence the only black scholar at Columbia University—largely due to the support of her mentor, the internationally acclaimed anthropologist Franz Boas. She also became one of the forces behind the Harlem Renaissance along with other literary figures like Alain Locke and Langston Hughes. Although, as might be guessed from Alice Walker’s quote above, some of her “force” might best be characterized as a swift kick to the backsides of more pretentious men.  Hurston’s academic training made her interested in documenting Negro folktales. But it was her artistic sensibilities, and I think her honest joy and delight in discovering the many varieties of culture, that was at the foundation of her belief that they were worth preserving as literature.

Her search for folklore took her on some wild journeys. The best sources for authentic material are in the most out of the way places, those least accessible to outside influences. A single black woman in the twenties, she drove her own car, carried a gun, and sometimes passed herself off as a bootlegger to gain access to reclusive and suspicious communities. It sounds romantic and adventurous but in truth Hurston’s life was harsh and even dangerous, although not without its humorous moments. Alice Walker notes that Hurston “once sold hot dogs in a Washington park just to record accurately how the black people who bought hot dogs talked.” There is also a famous, if apocryphal, story that she once talked a policeman out of arresting her for crossing a street against the light by claiming that she’d seen the white people crossing on the green light, and assumed that the red light must be for her.

Every Tongue Got to Confess contains some of the material she collected in the 20s but never published (and thus has been moldering in the basement of the Smithsonian for decades). It was considered too controversial, even for the “Roaring” Twenties, to be published during Hurston’s lifetime. Most established (and white) publishers felt the stories too bawdy or raunchy to print. The few who offered to publish them wanted to tone down the dialect and clean up the language—something Hurston refused to allow. Ironically, Hurston’s friends in the black literary community felt the same way as the white publishers—that at a time when they were struggling to have Black culture and arts taken seriously, she was undermining their efforts by showing it at its most rural, most provincial. Only a few people (Ernest Hemingway among them, oddly enough) seemed to recognize the important and difficult task she was attempting—to preserve a rich but basically oral culture on paper.

The stories in Every Tongue Got to Confess are divided by subject: God Tales, Preacher Tales, Devil Tales, and Tall Tales. It is amusing that God is always smarter than the preachers, the Devil is always smarter than god, and women are always smarter than the Devil. The Tall Tales are fantastic for their sheer invention: “I’ve seen de wind blow so hard it blowed de sun four hours late” and  “I’ve seen it so hot you had to feed the hens cracked ice to keep them from laying hard boiled eggs.”

Hurston was careful to transcribe the dialect as purely as possible, which allows the reader to almost ‘hear’ the stories as they are read. But what really comes through is their pervasive, canny and even subversive sense of humor. These folktales use laughter as a means of resistance. They laugh at oppression, at religion, at superstition and even at their own peoples’ silliness:

“De preacher was up preaching and he said: “Every tongue got to confess; everybody got to stand in judgement for theyself; every tub got to stand on its own bottom.” One little tee-ninchy woman in de amen corner said: “Lordy, make my bottom wider!” (Rebecca Corbett)

And yet you can often hear the sorrow behind the laughter:

“I seen a land so poor till dey had tuh put soda on people breast when dey bury dem so dey could rise in judgment.” (Floyd Thomas)

And the anger behind the sorrow:

“De gopher wuz called intuh the court. De judge an’ all de jury wuz all turtles. An’ de gopher got up and looked around, an’ ast de court could he be excused. De judge ast him why, an’ he told de judge “Blood is thicker dan water.” (Martin White)

Because the stories are from the oral tradition, and because Hurston was fastidious about recording the speech and dialect accurately, Every Tongue Got to Confess does not read like a standard collection of folk tales. No narrative liberties have been taken to make the tales more literary, to impose a coherent plot, or to neaten up an ending. But the music and the cadence of the speech has been preserved. And oh, they are funny. It is their humor that makes these tales “raunchy,” but also it is that same humor the characters so familiar and easy to identify with, and that makes the stories so easy to read and enjoy. A person can’t help laughing when reading, but overall, Every Tongue Got to Confess is one mean and impressive book.

Books mentioned in this column:
Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston (Harper Perennial, 2008)
Every Tongue Got to Confess by Zora Neale Hurston (Harper Perennial; 2002)

Nicki Leone showed her proclivities early when as a young child she asked her parents if she could exchange the jewelry a well-meaning relative had given her for Christmas for a dictionary instead. She supported her college career with a part-time job in a bookstore, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that her college career and attending scholarships and financial aid loans supported her predilection for working as a bookseller. She has been in the book business for over twenty years. Currently she works for the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, developing marketing and outreach programs for independent bookstores. Nicki has been a book reviewer for several magazines, her local public radio station and local television stations. She was one of the founders of The Cape Fear Crime Festival, currently serves as President of the Board of Trustees of the North Carolina Writers Network, and as Managing Editor of BiblioBuffet. Plus, she blogs at Will Read for Food. She manages all this by the grace of a very patient partner and the loving support of varying numbers of dogs and cats. Contact Nicki.