Skip to main content

Cultural Memory in Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men

  • Chapter
The Funk Era and Beyond

Part of the book series: Signs of Race ((SOR))

  • 107 Accesses

Abstract

Narratives are a highly regarded source of many cultural findings in humanistic studies, such as literature, history, and the arts. Whether communicating through written or spoken words, visual or performing arts, narratives offer a qualitative value that is distinct from many other methodologies. In literature, narratives are particularly insightful in the way in which they combine art and history in the telling. For example, I will examine the ways in which Zora Neale Hurston’s folkloric masterpiece Mules and Men moves beyond the written word to infuse dance as a meta-narrative of cultural memory connecting this writer and, by extension her African American readers, with a fictive African past.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. Kimberle Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” in The Black Feminist Reader, ed. Joy James and T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 209.

    Google Scholar 

  2. John V. Roberts, From Trickster to Badman: The Black Folk Hero in Slavery and Freedom (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 10.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Guy Widdershoven, “The Story of Life: Hermeneutic Perspectives on the Relationship between Narrative and Life History,” in The Narrative Study of Lives, ed. R. Jacoselson and A. Leiblich (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1993), 4.

    Google Scholar 

  4. J.H. Kwabena Nketia, The Music of Africa (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1974), 207–8.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Nketia, Drumming in Akan Communities (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1963), 165.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Nketia, Drumming in Akan Communities, 170 Lynn Fauley Emery, Black Dance in the United States from 1619 to 1970 (Palo Alto, CA: National Press Books, 1972), 98.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Kofi A. Agawu, African Rhythm: A Northern Ewe Perspective (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 117.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Ruth M. Stone, Music in West Africa: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 91.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men (Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1935), 62.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Lynn Fauley Emery, Black Dance in the United States from 1619 to 1970 (Palo Alto, CA: National Press Books, 1972), 98.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Susan Feldman, African Myths and Tales (New York: Dell Publishing, 1963), 15.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Geoffrey Gorer, Africa Dances: A Book About West African Negroes (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1935), 306.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Joseph R. Roach, “Deep Skin: Reconstructing Congo Square,” in African American Performance and Theater History: A Critical Reader, ed. Harry J. Elam and David Krasner (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 103. Emery, 2.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday Press, 1972).

    Google Scholar 

  15. Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 24.

    Google Scholar 

  16. David Meltzer, Reading Jazz (San Francisco: Mercury House, 1993), 33.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors

Editor information

Tony Bolden

Copyright information

© 2008 Tony Bolden

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Krouse-Dismukes, O. (2008). Cultural Memory in Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men. In: Bolden, T. (eds) The Funk Era and Beyond. Signs of Race. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-61453-6_13

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics