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4.4 AVERAGE
4.4 AVERAGE
slow-paced
Valerie Boyd’s was complemented Hurston’s memoir Dust Tracks on a Road well. The memoir gives Hurston’s voice and vision, but maintains certain fictions about her life (e.g., her age) and has some notable lacunae, results of its time of writing, what Hurston wanted to reveal, and her publisher’s ham-handed editing of an outspoken black author to make her palatable for Jim Crow America. Boyd does a good job reconciling Hurston’s memoir to her real life.
The scope of Boyd’s biography necessarily far exceeds that of Dust Tracks, covering Hurston’s family history, her marriages, background on her friends, the Harlem Renaissance, and her later life.
A sensitive examination of the life of this unique and important American voice.
The scope of Boyd’s biography necessarily far exceeds that of Dust Tracks, covering Hurston’s family history, her marriages, background on her friends, the Harlem Renaissance, and her later life.
A sensitive examination of the life of this unique and important American voice.
Just magnificent. Boyd doesn’t get fancy—it’s a biography, not a formal experiment—but oh, does it sing. I’ve had a literary crush on Zora since college and this has only served to make it so much worse.
I love that it doesn't just focus on Zora's biography, but also on her work, and the socio-cultural context of the period. It's a very comprehensive look at her life.
This was a thoughtful and thoroughly researched biography of Zora Neale Hurston. It took me a long time to read due to life circumstances and the many, many details that Boyd has woven together to create a narrative. Though at times it felt long, I was especially impressed by how she integrated quotes from Hurston's own writings into the text. I also learned more than I expected about Hurston's writing career, including that the autobiography/memoir that I adore [b:Dust Tracks on a Road|58399|Dust Tracks on a Road|Zora Neale Hurston|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1441480196l/58399._SY75_.jpg|940516] was made more subtle at the behest of her publishers. I also lacked clarity about what led to Zora's descent into relative obscurity and severely underestimated the extent of her scholarship and travel. Overall, I highly recommend this for a comprehensive look at the life and letters of Zora Neale Hurston and encourage you to read (and re-read) the work of Hurston. Next up, [b:Their Eyes Were Watching God|37415|Their Eyes Were Watching God|Zora Neale Hurston|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1368072803l/37415._SY75_.jpg|1643555] and [b:Moses, Man of the Mountain|84030|Moses, Man of the Mountain|Zora Neale Hurston|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387734776l/84030._SY75_.jpg|942014].
Compelling and thorough biography. Felt the end of her life section was a tad rushed, but still a great read.
It's not every day that a white man writes a disparaging review of a biography about a seminal black author written by another black woman. That's likely because white men don't read books about black women to start with, and that's the most charitable thing I can say in defense of Lewis Millholland's trash review of Valerie Boyd's "Wrapped in Rainbows," the story of Zora Neale Hurston.
The review kicks off deceptively woke, acknowledging that American society grants no value to women after they pass their child-rearing years. "There's no better example of this than Zora Neale Hurston," Millholland writes. "Hurston blasted onto the literary scene in 1934 with 'Jonah's Gourde Vine' and just three years later produced 'Their Eyes Were Watching God.' But then, as the years rolled into the forties, and Zora's voice came through confused, exhausted, there wasn't anything left for her to offer the world. Zora'd gone the way of all women in society -- forgotten."
Even leaving aside *Moses, Man of the Mountain* and her coverage of the Ruby McCollum trial for the *Pittsburgh Courier*, Millholland's assessment that Zora was "forgotten" after 1940 is, at best, ignorance, and at worst malicious sexism. It makes a reader wonder if Millholland finished the book, considering Boyd devotes several pages to this concept of "writing burnout." It happens to all writers as they age, men and women. Hemingway was Boyd's vivid example who, despite a swan song in the form of *Old Man and the Sea*, recognized he had nothing left to write and shot himself in Ketchum, Idaho.
Millholland does flag a poignant observation on black Americans, though. Fresh off the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Fredrick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom," he asks why historical black figures are fundamentally *good* people. Other than affairs and lackluster parenting, famous black Americans aren't assholes. There's not black Hemingway gaslighting F. Scott Fitzgerald into questioning his marriage after the man's wife refused to sleep with him, no black Bob Dylan ejecting friends out of his limo into the Manhattan winter. Is it because biographers are more defensive of their subject's morality if they're black -- or "handling them with kids' gloves," as Millholland put it -- or is basic decency a requirement for blacks in a way it doesn't to whites? If you're black in America, do you have to have a knack for keeping the peace if you want to progress at all?
Of course, Millholland scraps this line of thought in its infancy, preferring to turn back into criticizing "Wrapped in Rainbows." He calls it "the truest biography I've read, since seventy percent of it is a third-person narrative and not a slice of history told through a noteworthy subject." Other than Zora's influence on the Harlem Renaissance and sporadic bursts into the national literature scene, Millholland argues, the book is the tale of a single black women trying to make ends meet in the pre-civil rights era. "It's a powerful story," he concedes, "but it's not history."
Again, the question arises: did Millholland read the book? Hurston's influence on writers including Langston Hughes continued throughout her life, and her contributions to anthropological discoveries across America and the Caribbean were, in her own time, unparalleled. The popular conception of "hoodoo" was thrown on its head as a direct result of her findings. To write Hurston out of history because her novels weren't winning awards is a shaky argument. I give his review a zero out of five stars.
The review kicks off deceptively woke, acknowledging that American society grants no value to women after they pass their child-rearing years. "There's no better example of this than Zora Neale Hurston," Millholland writes. "Hurston blasted onto the literary scene in 1934 with 'Jonah's Gourde Vine' and just three years later produced 'Their Eyes Were Watching God.' But then, as the years rolled into the forties, and Zora's voice came through confused, exhausted, there wasn't anything left for her to offer the world. Zora'd gone the way of all women in society -- forgotten."
Even leaving aside *Moses, Man of the Mountain* and her coverage of the Ruby McCollum trial for the *Pittsburgh Courier*, Millholland's assessment that Zora was "forgotten" after 1940 is, at best, ignorance, and at worst malicious sexism. It makes a reader wonder if Millholland finished the book, considering Boyd devotes several pages to this concept of "writing burnout." It happens to all writers as they age, men and women. Hemingway was Boyd's vivid example who, despite a swan song in the form of *Old Man and the Sea*, recognized he had nothing left to write and shot himself in Ketchum, Idaho.
Millholland does flag a poignant observation on black Americans, though. Fresh off the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Fredrick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom," he asks why historical black figures are fundamentally *good* people. Other than affairs and lackluster parenting, famous black Americans aren't assholes. There's not black Hemingway gaslighting F. Scott Fitzgerald into questioning his marriage after the man's wife refused to sleep with him, no black Bob Dylan ejecting friends out of his limo into the Manhattan winter. Is it because biographers are more defensive of their subject's morality if they're black -- or "handling them with kids' gloves," as Millholland put it -- or is basic decency a requirement for blacks in a way it doesn't to whites? If you're black in America, do you have to have a knack for keeping the peace if you want to progress at all?
Of course, Millholland scraps this line of thought in its infancy, preferring to turn back into criticizing "Wrapped in Rainbows." He calls it "the truest biography I've read, since seventy percent of it is a third-person narrative and not a slice of history told through a noteworthy subject." Other than Zora's influence on the Harlem Renaissance and sporadic bursts into the national literature scene, Millholland argues, the book is the tale of a single black women trying to make ends meet in the pre-civil rights era. "It's a powerful story," he concedes, "but it's not history."
Again, the question arises: did Millholland read the book? Hurston's influence on writers including Langston Hughes continued throughout her life, and her contributions to anthropological discoveries across America and the Caribbean were, in her own time, unparalleled. The popular conception of "hoodoo" was thrown on its head as a direct result of her findings. To write Hurston out of history because her novels weren't winning awards is a shaky argument. I give his review a zero out of five stars.
A well-done biography. Zora Neale Hurston led a fascinating life, staying true to herself as best as she could under any circumstances she found herself in. The biography did feel a tiny bit long at times, but I think the author would have been hard-pressed to trim sections very much. Overall, a very satisfying read.
Certainly you would be hard pressed to find a more comprehensive work on Hurston, and I've long been emphatic that everyone should be more familiar with her and her writings.