Hurston, Zora Neale (Vol. 30) - Arna Bontemps

ARNA BONTEMPS

[Zora Neale Hurston's autobiography] "Dust Tracks on a Road" should not be read for its comments on the Negro as a whole. Miss Hurston feels that God made Negroes, as he made all other people, "duck by duck." She says, "That was the only way I could see them." She urges the powerful of the earth to "think kindly of those who walk in the dust." She suggests to the humble ones that they respect those who are not so humble. She invites all to be kissing-friends in the hope that we may breed, please God, hundreds of generations hence, a noble world. Meanwhile, she concludes, if we don't all meet in this world, we may "meet at a barbecue."

Miss Hurston deals very simply with the more serious aspects of Negro life in America—she ignores them. She has done right well by herself in the kind of world she found.

Arna Bontemps, "From Eatonville, Fla. to Harlem," in New York Herald Tribune Books, November 22, 1942, p....

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