Mules and Men

Zora Neale Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama in 1891 to two working class parents. Her family relocated to Eatonville, Florida when Hurston was very young. The first decade of her life is largely a mystery, as she intentionally lied to her biographer and others throughout her life, claiming to be born in 1901 instead. What is known about her childhood is that she and her stepmother engaged in a tumultuous relationship after Hurston’s mother died. During her life, Hurston published four novels, several nonfiction works, and many short stories, essays, and articles. She was part of the Harlem Renaissance movement, an artistic and literary movement that aimed to celebrate Black perspectives. She attended Howard University, Barnard College, and Columbia University and won two Guggenheim Fellowship grants for her research in Jamaica and Haiti. She died at the age of 69 in 1960 in a welfare home in Florida and was buried in an unmarked grave until fellow author Alice Walker rediscovered her grave in 1973. Posthumously, she is recognized for her major contributions to modern literature, namely in regards to Black American and feminist literature.

Hurston’s work was highly influenced by the complex sociopolitical changes that transpired from her birth through World War II. As such, her writing reflects nuanced ideas that are not always easily digestible for readers. For example, her views about Black folklore as reflected in Mules and Men are left largely unstated in the work and are rather implied by the content she chose to include, or exclude, and the tone of the work. Hurston viewed folklore as artistic syntheses of the world around an emerging cultural zeitgeist—something that many Black Americans had to negotiate during and after slavery. Her views regarding politics, especially as precursors to the Civil Rights Movement in United States began at the end of her life, ostracized her from many other salient Black authors and artists of her time. For example, she condemned the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education because she feared it would cost many Black teachers their jobs, thereby depriving Black students of the support they need from these teachers. Her transition into obscurity during her life is congruous of many of her aims in publishing Mules and Men: Like the disappearing folklore and hoodoo that reflect ideas that are sometimes problematic when read today, Hurston too disappeared when neither Black nor white audiences were interested in the conflicting complexities of her work.

The posthumous revitalization in Hurston’s work initiated by Alice Walker is an important factor when assessing Hurston’s writing. What was too complex, undesirable, or mysterious about Hurston’s work while she was alive has gained a new sense of appreciation. This is in no small part related to the authenticity of Hurston’s writing, as readers today are offered a unique view into a past that is not well-documented. Before her death, the Black literary tradition in the United States moved away from the semi-phonetic representations of Black speech because many white authors had used these conventions while upholding racist rhetoric. Her contemporary authors of color felt that representing speech in this way was actually furthering racist and reductive views about Black and African Americans. Decades after this debate, however, works like Mules and Men now function as a time capsule, and Hurston’s unrelenting emphasis on authenticity renders her representations of Black communities in the Deep South valuable commemorations of times and people long past.