Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston

"I have known the joy and pain of deep friendship. I have served and been served. I have made some good enemies for which I am not a bit sorry. I have loved unselfishly, and I have fondled hatred with the red-hot tongs of Hell. That's a living."
                    -Zora Neale Hurston

I believe Zora Neale Hurston must have been an amazing woman---definitely ahead of her time. She lived and worked at a time before the Civil Rights Era when women were still pretty much second-class citizens. As a black woman she still seemed unfazed by it all. In fact she was denigrated by other black writers of her time because she did not speak out strongly enough against racism. It simply had not been her experience.

I chose to read this book in preparation for an adult class I was planning to teach on Florida Authors: Then and Now. She would be one of the "thens." Our Page Turners group had read Their Eyes Were Watching God, considered Zora's masterpiece, several years ago and most of us liked it.
Dust Tracks... is her autobiography so I chose it for my class, thinking it would allow students to learn of her life as well as her writing. I had been warned by a reliable source that it was not a typical autobiography with perhaps even some stretching of the truth. As I read other sources before starting Dust Tracks... I could see that even her place of birth was argued---Notasulga, Alabama or Eatonville, Florida. Zora says the latter but most other bios say the former. Apparently her family moved to Eatonville when she was still an infant.

Choosing a quote was a difficult task since she was quite witty and even philosophical at times. I didn't realize Hurston was an anthropologist, folklorist and playwright as well as a novelist and I learned she was the first African-American to graduate from Barnard College. But the most surprising thing about Zora Neale Hurston was that after she reached the pinnacle of her career in the late 30's to early 40's, her work fell from grace and she ended up working as a maid, a librarian and a substitute teacher in the 50's before dying of a stroke at age 69 in a county welfare home. It was not until 1973 when Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, published an article in Ms. called "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston" that interest in and respect for Zora's work was rekindled.

Biography is not a favorite genre of mine but as I said, this one isn't typical. I will rate it a 4. It has inspired me to read more of Zora's work.