CHAPTER 1

One of the leading artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance, ZoraNeale Hurston (1891-1960) was a novelist, anthropologist, folklorist, andchampion of black heritage, and the first African American woman to receive aGuggenheim fellowship. Her work includes four novels, including Their Eyes WereWatching God and Jonah's Gourd Vine, numerous short stories, essays, and plays,and her autobiography Dust Tracks on the Road, for which she received theAnisfield-Wolf Award. This is an excerpt from her autobiography.

MY MOTHER WAS THE ONE TO DARE ALL

Our house had eight rooms, and we called it a two-story house; but later on Ilearned it was really one story and a jump. The big boys all slept up there, andit was a good place to hide and shirk from sweeping off the front porch orraking up the back yard.

Downstairs in the dining-room there was an old "safe," a punched design in itstin doors. Glasses of guava jelly, quart jars of pear, peach, and other kinds ofpreserves. The left-over cooked foods were on the lower shelves.

There were eight children in the family, and our house was noisy from the timeschool turned out until bedtime. After supper we gathered in Mama's room, andeverybody had to get their lessons for the next day. Mama carried us all pastlong division in arithmetic, and parsing sentences in grammar, by diagrams onthe blackboard. That was as far as she had gone. Then the younger ones wereturned over to my oldest bother, Bob, and Mama sat and saw to it that we paidattention. You had to keep on going over things until you did know. How I hatedthe multiplication tables—especially the sevens!

We had a big barn, and a stretch of ground well covered with Bermuda grass. Soon moonlight nights, two-thirds of the village children from seven to eighteenwould be playing hide and whoop, chickmah-chick, hide and seek, and otherboisterous games in our yard. Once or twice a year we might get permission to goand play at some other house. But that was most unusual. Mama contended that wehad plenty of space to play in; plenty of things to play with; and, furthermore,plenty of us to keep each other's company. If she had her way, she meant toraise her children to stay at home. She said that there was no need for us tolive like no-count Negroes and poor white trash—too poor to sit in the house—hadto come outdoors for any pleasure, or hang around somebody else's house. Any ofher children who had any tendencies like that must have got it from the Hurstonside. It certainly did not come from the Pottses. Things like that gave me myfirst glimmering of the universal female gospel that all good traits andleanings come from the mother's side.

Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to "jump at de sun." We mightnot land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground. Papa did not feelso hopeful. Let well enough alone. It did not do for Negroes to have too muchspirit. He was always threatening to break mine or kill me in the attempt. Mymother was always standing between us. She conceded that I was impudent andgiven to talking back, but she didn't want to "squinch my spirit" too much forfear that I would turn out to be a mealy-mouthed rag doll by the time I gotgrown. Papa always flew hot when Mama said that. I do not know whether he fearedfor my future with the tendency I had to stand and give battle, or that he felta personal reference in Mama's observation. He predicted dire things for me. Thewhite folks were not going to stand for it. I was going to be hung before I gotgrown. Somebody was going to blow me down for my sassy tongue. Mama was going tosuck sorrow for not beating my temper out of me before it was too late. Posseswith ropes and guns were going to drag me out sooner or later on account of thatstiff neck I toted. I was going to tote a hungry belly by reason of my forwardways. My older sister was meek and mild. She would always get along. Whycouldn't I be like her? Mama would keep right on with whatever she was doing andremark, "Zora is my young'un, and Sarah is yours. I'll be bound mine will comeout more than conquer. You leave her alone. I'll tend to her when I figger sheneeds it." She meant by that that Sarah had a disposition like Papa's,...