Alice Walker (2003): Journey to Zora Neale Hurston

this is to banish all of the academic air I want to tell you that I grew up in Eatonton Georgia not eaten bill and you you'd be amazed at how many people just assumed I i'm from eatonville but actually I'm from Eatonton Georgia I'm the eighth child of parents who were sharecroppers and sharecropping I don't like to use the word sharecropper because think about what comes into your mind when I say that word what comes into your mind there's no way you could see that underneath that word were my parents who were excellent farmers who really knew a thing or two about the land you know who if you were hungry and destitute and you found your way to our door they could take care of you you don't hear that under the word sharecropper you could hear it under the word farmer but in any case I grew up not even in a town I grew up in the countryside thank goodness a very beautiful countryside and I heard these wonderful stories from my parents my parents and my grandparents because you know this was all before television and people could still tell stories and people still listened to stories and they were so funny and they were so wonderful and they were so deeply about teaching us so when I went to school I thought that that would continue that I would keep hearing those stories I would keep feeling this connect to our ancestors through the storytelling but this didn't happen because as soon as I went off to school and I loved school I was always a just uh you know dedicated and happy student but they didn't have stories they're really they didn't have our stories they had those things you know the ones where a spot has the ball and you know mm which just didn't compare really but that was what was considered worthwhile amazing isn't it so I went through you know grammar school and high school and really loving it I also am from in all black community so I knew absolutely everybody everybody knew me in some ways this is really similar to Eatonville except that they actually had a village and we were out in the country and so far from each other that you could barely ever see anybody I mean which was fine with me because I loved the countryside but in any case I went off to know before I went off to college I was in high school you have to go to high school first and I was working at a 4-h club as a salad girl now this is a place called rock eagle in my little hometown and it was of course thoroughly segregated and my job was to make these enormous salads for these white 4-h people who came to this place and I could make these salads and you know all of my classmates also made these salads but once you put them out there you had to disappear because you weren't supposed to be from behind you know the counter I mean you couldn't do like you had to be well-hidden and the point of this actually is that that was a year I think my junior year in school in high school that was the year that Zora died and I had no idea she had ever lived I remember in my senior year my next-door neighbor was already in college and he brought over to me Oedipus Rex and a lot of the Greek plays which I adored and I had been reading Jane Eyre every year since I was you know 12 but I had never heard of Zora Neale Hurston I had no idea none that there were black women writers and very little glimmering of an idea that there were black male writers we every once in a while somebody would recite something by Paul Laurence Dunbar but we didn't even know about Langston Hughes you know so I went off to school to Spelman College and nobody there I'd ever heard of Zora Neale Hurston either which is amazing it's a it's a women's college it has has a wonderful history and many wonderful truly great things about it but nobody there had a clue then I went off to Sarah Lawrence and again nobody knew anything except two things happened there that were amazing one was that my poetry teacher was Muriel Rukeyser and she was quite wonderful to me except that she taught black litter I mean white literature without any black people in it and then years later years later she said she wrote to me and she said I knew Zora she said I news or very well because one time she told me during the Scottsboro you know disaster down in the south she said you know come south with me and I said to her I said well Zora I can't go with you solid cuz I can't pass you know what passing is right and she said Sora said to me well honey if you with me you passin but who knew she did not tell me she did not tell me you know and maybe it just didn't occur to her to say when I was there starting my writing giving her actually my very first book of poems which she helped me to get published she did not think to say here is this wonderful writer Zora Neale Hurston whom I knew isn't it incredible I think that's really remarkable now the other remarkable thing is that she gave my visit still Muriel Rukeyser my teacher she gave my first volume of poetry to the Nagant to be published later and she connected me with Langston Hughes now this was such an incredible gift and she gave him my first short story which is to hell with dying and he immediately wanted to publish it in a collection called the best short stories by Negro writers now there is a story in that volume by Zora Neale Hurston but I think I actually never noticed that because I was so also really looking at the men you know but the really strange thing about that was that when I went up to Harlem to meet him and I he opened the door and he said to me this is Langston this is a man who was friends with Sora for years and years and years knew her work very well he looked at me and instead of saying which I think he should have said you know you remind me of Zora he said you remind me of a young ruby dee so there's a whole story about my relationship with Langston which was very rich brief but very fulfilling and I have spent a good bit of my time in thinking about the two of these people I think about them as my aunt and uncle and I will not have it that they had an argument and kept the argument going because I just never felt that that was true and even if it were true I have felt that it was my responsibility as the descendant to bring them together so that we can understand we are not perfect beings see how quiet it got people - oh we're not what a relief we are not perfect beings we have arguments we hurt each other's feelings we make each other suffer we do and yet you know we're human that's it that's what goes on down here up here out here and in fact I want to read you a poem I you know when they when people invite you to speak at places like bonhart they say you know this is like it can be two years ago twelve months ago whatever and they say what are you going to talk about and give us a title and I used to just say I don't know and I don't have a title and you deal with it but now I just come up with anything and I send it so so if you have you know that long title in your catalog or whatever it is not you know it doesn't really connect necessarily so anyway so I was thinking that one of the things I wanted to do I really meditated on this a long time and you know really thought about these two people that I I love so dearly I loved them see they seemed to me really fine you know really find good people all their little flaws you know they don't really matter in the end so I was thinking well Sora would have loved like some for instance for this poem this is a poem called God - hungry child hungry child I didn't make this world for you you didn't buy any stock in my railroad you didn't invest in my corporation where are your shares in Standard Oil I made the world for the rich and the will be rich and they have always been rich not for you hungry child

Channel: Barnard Center for Research on Women

Views: 13,099

Rating: 4.9649124 out of 5

Keywords: Zora Neale Hurston (Author), Alice Walker (Author)

Id: wSzzeleeMuI

Length: 12min 58sec (778 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 07 2014