Dust Tracks On A Road

First published in 1942 at the height of her popularity, Dust Tracks on a Road is Zora Neale Hurston's candid, funny, bold, and poignant autobiography, an imaginative and exuberant account of her rise from childhood poverty in the rural South to a prominent place among the leading artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance. As compelling as her acclaimed fiction, Hurston's very personal literary self-portrait offers a revealing, often audacious glimpse into the life -- public and private -- of an extraordinary artist, anthropologist, chronicler, and champion of the black experience in America. Full of the wit and wisdom of a proud, spirited woman who started off low and climbed high, Dust Tracks on a Road is a rare treasure from one of literature's most cherished voices.

"Warm, witty, imaginative. . . . This is a rich and winning book."-The New Yorker.The autobiography of novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, one of America's most captivating and important authors, Dust Tracks on a Road, is daring, heartbreaking, and humorous. Hurston's dramatic Southern books, such as Jonah's Gourd Vine and, most famously, Their Eyes Were Watching God, continue to captivate readers with their lyrical beauty, piercing detail, and compelling emotionality. Dust Tracks on a Road was first published in 1942 and tells Hurston's personal narrative in her own words.

Traces the career of the influential African-American writer, citing the historical backdrop of her life and work while considering her relationships with and influences on top literary, intellectual, and artistic figures.

“ I mean to live and die by my own mind,” Zora Neale Hurston told the writer Countee Cullen. Arriving in Harlem in 1925 with little more than a dollar to her name, Hurston rose to become one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance, only to die in obscurity. Not until the 1970s was she rediscovered by Alice Walker and other admirers. Although Hurston has entered the pantheon as one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century, the true nature of her personality has proven elusive. Now, a brilliant, complicated and utterly arresting woman emerges from this landmark book. Carla Kaplan, a noted Hurston scholar, has found hundreds of revealing, previously unpublished letters for this definitive collection; she also provides extensive and illuminating commentary on Hurston’s life and work, as well as an annotated glossary of the organizations and personalities that were important to it. From her enrollment at Baltimore’s Morgan Academy in 1917, to correspondence with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Langston Hughes, Dorothy West and Alain Locke, to a final query letter to her publishers in 1959, Hurston’s spirited correspondence offers an invaluable portrait of a remarkable, irrepressible talent.

Zora Neale Hurston(1891 -- 1960) Of the various signs that the study of literature in America has been transformed, none is more salient than is the resurrection and canonization of Zora Neale Hurston. Twenty years ago, Hurston's work was largely out-of-print, her literary legacy alive only to a tiny, devoted band of readers who were often forced to photocopy her works if they were to be taught ... Today her works are central to the canon of African-American, American, and Women's literatures ... The author of four novels, Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937),Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939), and Seraph on the Suwanee (1948); two books of folklore -- Mules and Men (1935) and Tell My Horse (1938); an autobiography, Dust Tracks On a Road (1942); and over 50 short stories, essays, and plays, Hurston was one of the most widely acclaimed Black authors for the two decades between 1925 and 1945. -- from the Preface by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

This Library of America volume, with its companion, brings together for the first time all of the best writing of Zora Neale Hurston, one of the most significant twentieth-century American writers, in one authoritative set. “Folklore is the arts of the people,” Hurston wrote, “before they find out that there is any such thing as art.” A pioneer of African-American ethnography who did graduate study in anthropology with the renowned Franz Boas, Hurston devoted herself to preserving the black folk heritage. In Mules and Men (1935), the first book of African-American folklore written by an African American, she returned to her native Florida and to New Orleans to record stories and sermons, blues and work songs, children’s games, courtship rituals, and formulas of voodoo doctors. This classic work is presented here with the original illustrations by the great Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias. Tell My Horse (1938), part ethnography, part travel book, vividly recounts the survival of African religion in Jamaican obeah and Haitian voodoo in the 1930s. Keenly alert to political and intellectual currents, Hurston went beyond superficial exoticism to explore the role of these religious systems in their societies. The text is illustrated by twenty-six photographs, many of them taken by Hurston. Her extensive transcriptions of Creole songs are here accompanied by new translations. A special feature of this volume is Hurston’s controversial 1942 autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road. With consultation by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., it is presented here for the first time as she intended, restoring passages omitted by the original because of political controversy, sexual candor, or fear of libel. Included in an appendix are four additional chapters, one never published, which represent earlier stages of Hurston’s conception of the book. Twenty-two essays, from “The Eatonville Anthology” (1926) to “Court Order Can’t Make Races Mix” (1955), demonstrate the range of Hurston’s concerns as they cover subjects from religion, music, and Harlem slang to Jim Crow and American democracy. The chronology of Hurston’s life prepared for this edition sheds fresh light on many aspects of her career. In addition, this volume contains detailed notes and a brief essay on the texts. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

"I have been in Sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows with a harp and a sword in my hands." First published in 1942 at the crest of her popularity, this is Zora Neale Hurston's unrestrained account of her rise from childhood poverty in the rural South to prominence among the leading artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance. Full of wit and wisdom, and audaciously spirited, Dust Tracks on a Road offers a rare, poignant glimpse of the life -- public and private -- of a premier African-American writer, artist, anthropologist and champion of the black heritage.

A candid, funny, bold and poignant autobiography from one of literature's most cherished voices. Dust Tracks on a Road is the enthralling account of Zora Neale Hurston's rise from an impoverished childhood in the rural South to celebrated artist of the Harlem Renaissance. Penguin Random House Canada is proud to bring you classic works of literature in e-book form, with the highest quality production values. Find more today and rediscover books you never knew you loved.