Feminist Literature's Prophet: A Review of Novels & Stories by Zora Neale Hurston (Library of America No. 74)

Zora Neale Hurston : Novels and Stories : Jonah's Gourd Vine / Their Eyes Were Watching God / Moses, Man of the Mountain / Seraph on the Suwanee / Selected Stories by Zora Neale Hurston

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Zora Neale Hurston was an African-American novelist and anthropologist who rose to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance and wrote the classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Sadly, much of Ms. Hurston’s fictional work were not popular with the public at large until well after her death in 1960. This volume from the Library of America gathers four of her fictional novels and a few of her short stories, including Their Eyes Were Watching God and Moses, Man of the Mountain. Through this collection, one can read the full breadth of Ms. Hurston’s fictional talent and all the good and bad elements of it.

Most of this book’s staggering 1000+ page count is used by her four novels, starting with her first novel Jonah’s Gourd Vine and includes: Their Eyes Were Watching God; Moses, Man of the Mountain; and Seraph on the Suwanee.  The last 100 pages or so consist of her short stories.  When talking about her novels, you cannot skip over Their Eyes Were Watching God.  This now classic tale of female empowerment would prefigure and inspire such African-American novelists as Alice Walker, who would do much to rescue Ms. Hurston’s works from obscurity after her death.  But to me, the most interesting novels in this collection are Moses, Man of the Mountain and Seraph on the Suwanee.  The first is the retelling of the Biblical tale of the Exodus, with a bit of Ms. Hurston’s flare from her previous works thrown in for good measure.  It was a throughly entertaining retelling of an otherwise familiar story.  Seraph is interesting because it was a departure for Ms. Hurston.  Whereas Jonah and Their Eyes, and one could rightfully argue Moses, revolved mostly around black characters, Seraph revolved mostly around white characters.  And yet Ms. Hurston’s fascination with marital relations, which is a common theme throughout almost all of her fictional work, is at the very heart of this book.

In terms of her short stories, the ones that stuck out to me were “John Redding Goes to Sea”, “Spunk”, “The Bone of Contention” and “The Fire and the Cloud”.  I especially enjoyed “The Fire and the Cloud” as it is a short story about Moses, written in the same style as Moses, Man of the Mountain, and sees Moses at the end of his life just before the Israelites are about to enter the promised land.  Thus, its a little addendum to Moses that puts a little bow on that novels ending.

While each of the novels and stories has their own highpoints and drawbacks, one of the most persistent drawbacks of this book is Ms. Hurston’s use of dialect for her characters’ dialogue.  In both Jonah and Their Eyes as well as all but one of her short stories, Ms. Hurston uses dialect for all of her characters' dialogue.  As I understand it, dialect as used by Ms. Hurston and other writers is suppose to make the story and the characters more realistic, but I have always found it difficult to enjoy it.  To me, it just adds an unnecessary layer of complexity to the story and slows down my reading pace (it took me twice as long to finish this book than I had originally planned).  It also seems unnecessary to me as in both Moses and Seraph, Ms. Hurston jettisons the dialect, but is still able to convey her character’s realistic accents without it.  So, if you are not fan of dialect, just know that this book may turn into a bit of a slog, especially at the beginning.

Zora Neale Hurston was a pioneer of black feminist literature in America, even if her contemporary audiences didn’t fully appreciate her talents.  This volume is a worthy inclusion in the Library of America and I highly recommend it to fans of African-American literature in general and specifically the literature of the Harlem Renaissance.

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Do Not Throw Away Your Shot: A Review of Furia

Furia by Yamile Saied Méndez

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Life is not always easy on a person’s dreams, especially on a young woman’s dreams in a country where gender equality is not highly valued. In this excellent YA novel, Ms. Méndez perfectly balances drama and romance to tell the tale of a young woman in Argentina pursuing her impossible dream: to become a professional fútbol player.

Camila is a Palestinian-Argentine teen who has been forbidden from playing fútbol (soccer for American audiences) by her mother and abusive father.  But unbeknownst to them, Camila is the star fútbol player on her teen girl’s team known as Furia who has a real shot at going pro.  But things start to get complicated as her older brother’s pro fútbol career continues to thrive and Diego, a local boy who has made a reputation as El Títan in the Italian fútbol league and who has had a crush on Camila since they were kids, comes back home.  As all of these things collide, Camila has to make a choice between her love and her dream.

The first couple of chapters made me a bit concerned.  With all of these multiple narrative threads, it was difficult to figure out where exactly this book was going in the beginning.  I also feared that this book would tip over too much into typical YA romance territory with lots of melodrama.  Fortunately, like her main character, Ms. Méndez knows the story that she wants to tell and begins to thread these multiple plots together brilliantly.  This is not a sappy YA romance, nor does the ending feel like it magically happened.  There are real consequences to Camila’s choices and some of them nearly put her dreams out of reach.

Because there are multiple plot points throughout this novel, some don’t get as much play as I feel they should have.  In particular, Ms. Méndez is able to weave a bit of Argentine politics into this novel.  Argentina’s battle over women’s rights in general and abortion in particular is prevalent in the background of this book and even has a bit of a moment to shine towards the end.  But Ms. Méndez doesn’t go more than skin deep in examining these issues in this novel.  Admittedly, weaving in these kind of gender politics might have dragged the main narrative down, but I personally would not have minded if she had explored it more deeply, in the same way that Angie Thomas explored race issues in The Hate U Give.

Overall, this is a great tale of female empowerment and choosing which dreams to follow.  While it takes a few chapters for things to coalesce, when it does this novel is great.  Whether you are in to YA novels or not, I highly recommend this book to you.

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