[In the following essay, Lawrence discusses Hurston's Mules and Men and her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God as ethnographies, contending that “folklorists and anthropologists must trust in Hurston's skill as both a scientist and an artist in order to fully comprehend and appreciate the value of these works as exceptional representations of African American culture.”]

There is no story that is not true.

—Spoken by Uchendo in Things Fall Apart

Without a doubt one of the emergent, if not dominant, trends in both anthropology and folklore in the last fifteen years has been a significant movement toward a conception of an ethnography that is more fictive in content and more literary or creative in form. This can be witnessed in the publication of major theoretical works calling for increased experimentation in ethnographic writing and in the relative explosion of ethnographies of experimental design. Anthropologists and folklorists have begun to accept an idea which has, in the past, been virtually impossible for them to embrace, their sensitivities being largely influenced by the “objectivity” supposedly inherent in scientific rhetoric. That previously unbelievable idea, as Kamala Visweswaran so simply puts it, is that “we may also consider fiction as ethnography” (1994: 16). Works such as Writing Culture (Clifford and Marcus 1986) have laid a foundation for the potential opening up of the definition of ethnography, but it has largely been feminist critics like Visweswaran along with scholars from Ruth Behar and Deborah Gordon's wonderful book Women Writing Culture who have actually taken the crucial step towards accepting fiction as ethnography. Behar admits in her introduction that “it is now longer social scientists (like Margaret Mead) who are shaping US public understandings of culture, race, and ethnicity but novelists such as Toni Morrison and Amy Tan” (1995: 20). While a statement like this is encouraging, it does not necessarily indicate a complete willingness on the part of the majority of folklorists and anthropologists to accept experimental works which challenge established views on ethnographic content and genre. Yet statements like that of Behar and Visweswaran do seem to herald an openness, an opportunity not only for future ethnographic innovation, but also for past works to be reread and cast in a new light.

Zora Neale Hurston has been one of the likely beneficiaries of this new mindset. And yet, her works Mules and Men and Their Eyes Were Watching God have not been wholly accepted as experimental ethnography. Mules and Men has been embraced more as ethnography than Their Eyes Were Watching God because its form lends itself more to traditional conceptions of ethnography. But there are still elements within that work which cause some scholars to suffer palpitations. The idea that perhaps some of this material was not collected in the exact manner in which Hurston represents it in the book or that the “folk tales” have been framed with material fictionalized by Hurston causes substantial uneasiness and sometimes gives rise to claims of unreliability. These concerns become more intense when scholars turn their attention toward Their Eyes, a novel, which is admittedly, composed mainly of fictional elements. Understandably, these scholars hold significant reservations about accepting this novel as a reliable form of ethnography. It contains no documented performances, no verbatim recorded folk discourse, nor does it provide any explicit analysis of any folk element contained within it. But the fact is Hurston's representation of folk activity is accurate and representative whether it is fiction or not. John Roberts, in a review of the 1978 reprinting of both books commented, “Despite Hurston's inclination to be literary in her presentation of folklore, her understanding of Afro-American culture is impeccable … [h]er ability to capture the rhythms not only of black speech but also of black life is unsurpassed” (1980: 465). It would be difficult for anyone to dispute Robert's claim given the proof of Hurston's material and her documented hours of fieldwork. Yet in order for folklorists and anthropologists to accept the authenticity of Hurston's representations of the “rhythms” of black life, they must be willing to cast off the shackles of a deluded scientific rationalism which comforts its adherents with the “certainty” its rhetoric implies. Instead, folklorists and anthropologists must trust in Hurston's skill as both a scientist and an artist in order to fully comprehend and appreciate the value of these works as exceptional representations of African-American culture.

The goal of this study is to propose not only that both of these works are indeed reliable representations of African-American folk culture, but that they are exceptional ones because of their formal qualities. Their Eyes is, in a fashion, a re-writing of Mules, a further development in Hurston's experimentation with the fusing of creative writing and ethnography. I see this connection as a gradual development and superior extension of contextualization surrounding the folkloric elements contained in each work.

Mules and Men¹ was Hurston's first book-length compilation of the fieldwork collecting she began in the late twenties which extended into the early thirties under the watchful guidance of both Franz Boas and Carter G. Woodson. Robert Hemenway explains in his comprehensive account of Hurston's literary career that early on during the period when she was collecting and compiling, Hurston was encouraged to present her accumulated information without extraneous material or unnecessary commentary. He writes, “Neither Boas nor Carter Woodson was interested in her impressions; they wanted the facts as she had collected them” (1977: 101-2). Consequently, when some of this material appeared in two articles Hurston wrote for the Journal of American Folklore, “Dance Songs and Tales from the Bahamas” (1930) and particularly “Hoodoo in America” (1931), it was presented in accepted standard scientific form. “Dance Songs” was merely a listing of different songs and tales she had collected and “Hoodoo” was a very traditional “objective” exploration and explanation of Hoodoo practices in the Southern states. Later on, as Hurston began to assemble material she had gathered during this time into Mules and Men, which she completed by 1932, she began to lean toward introducing a creative element into her work rather than just compiling a simple listing of folktales, songs, and sayings. It did not seem to bother her to take creative liberties with her collected material. She wrote in a letter to Langston Hughes, “I have to rewrite a lot as you can understand. For I not only want to present the material with all the life and color of my people, I want to leave no loop-holes for the scientific crowd to rend and tear us … I am leaving the story material almost untouched. I have only tampered with it where the story teller was not clear. I know it is going to read different, but that is the glory of the thing, don't you think?” (Hemenway 1977: 126).

Hurston's admitted tampering with her accumulated material came from her desire to accurately portray the culture of the African American in Florida as completely and accurately as she could. The fact that the stories might “read different” with her additions was not terribly troubling to her because she felt obligated to represent the fullness of African-American folkloric performance. She claimed that she wanted to present “folk tales with background so that they are in atmosphere and not just stuck out into cold space” (Hemenway 1997: 163). The “atmosphere” she provided for the folktales included in Mules and Men is the flourishing context of characters and subtly drawn episodic action that takes place as the story moves from Eatonville to Polk County. As readers, we become acquainted with unforgettable characters like George Thomas, Joe Willard, Lucy, Ella, and of course Big Sweet, who is so adept at wielding a knife. Familiarity with these characters allows the reader to enter more fully into an understanding not simply of the text of these folktales as an annotated listing might do, but also of the situational appropriateness, contextual meaning, and audience dynamic necessary for the tales to be considered as integral performative events.

The more familiar the reader is with the characters who perform and witness these performances, the more complete his or her understanding will be of the performative event itself. This is the element Hurston introduces into folkloric representation with both of these books—an accurate way to more fully represent the performative act so as not to freeze it in time, but rather to free it up as a representative of the probable and ongoing activity of a culture. Cheryl Wall comments on Hurston's innovation: “Anticipating the work of current-day anthropologists by several decades, Hurston in the 1930s both theorized about and put into practice the concept of performance. For Hurston, performance is, as Bauman defines it, ‘the enactment of poetic function, the essence of spoken artistry’” (1986: 664). Hurston does this in presenting not just the folktales she intended to preserve but also the material surrounding them in which the characters may signify on each other or use folk sayings and proverbs to express opinions about the stories being told or to bring out their meaning. The entirety of this exchange is needed, however, to frame the performative event. For instance, in the Eatonville section, before and after Gold tells her etiological tale about “how come we so black,” there is an extended exchange in which Gold and Gene play on each other in something similar to the dozens, firing back and forth accusing the other of being blacker:

Then Gold spoke up and said, “Now, lemme tell one. Ah know one about a man as black as Gene.”

“Whut you always crackin' me for?” Gene wanted to know. “Ah ain't a bit blacker than you.”

“Oh, yes you is, Gene. Youse a whole heap blacker than Ah is.”

“Ah, go head on, Gold. Youse blacker than me. You jus' look my color cause you fat. If you wasn't no fatter than me you'd be so black till lightnin' bugs would follow you at twelve o'clock in the day, thinkin' it's midnight.”

“Dat's a lie, youse blacker than Ah ever dared to be. Youse lam' black. Youse so black till they have to throw a sheet over yo' head so de sun kin rise every mornin'. Ah know yo' ma cried when she seen you.”

(1935: 28)

After this playful exchange is quelled by Armetta, Gold proceeds to tell the now greatly anticipated tale. Feeling humiliated after the telling, Gene is compelled to question the validity of this tale as he has taken it as an attempt by Gold to insult him. He challenges the tale, claiming that Gold made it up, but both Armetta and Shoo-pie confirm the story's authenticity, telling Gene that they both had heard the story before:

“Now Gold call herself gettin' even wid me—tellin' dat lie. 'Tain't no such story nowhere. She just made dat one up herself.”

“Naw she didn't,” Armetta defended. “Ah been knowin' dat ole tale.”

“Me too,” said Shoo-pie.

(1935: 30)

The fact that others have heard the story told on another occasion corroborates the story's authenticity as well as Gold's legitimacy in her use of the story. The exchange then becomes heated again when it becomes one dealing with gender issues:

“Don't you know you can't git de best of no woman in de talkin' game? Her tongue is all de weapon a woman got,” George Thomas chided Gene. “She could have have mo' sense, but she told God no, she'd ruther take it out in hips. So God give her her ruthers. She got plenty hips, plenty mouf and no brains.”

“Oh, yes, womens is got sense too,” Mathilda Mosely jumped in. “But they got too much sense to go 'round braggin' about it like y'all do. De lady people always got de advantage of mens because God fixed it dat way.”

“Whut ole black advantage is y'all got?” B. Mosely asked indignantly.

“We got all de strength and all de law and all de money and you can't git a thing but whut we jes' take pity on you and give you.”

“And dat's jus' de point,” said Mathilda triumphantly. “You do give it to us, but how come you do it?”

(1935: 30)

This framing argument leads directly into Mathilda's telling of the story of “why women always take advantage of men” (1935: 31). In the case of these two tales,² the surrounding material which Hurston inserted partly for aesthetic reasons, functions not only in a purely connective fashion, but also as a grounding for the reader to understand cultural meaning of the tales themselves. Without the fictional contextualization, the isolated tales would provide only a partial understanding for the reader of how they function in a dynamic discursive moment.

So the material Hurston adds does not just link up two folktales, it instead provides a colorful and plausible scene in which the folktales are situated. The reader can witness Bauman's “spoken artistry” in action. The reader becomes a part of the audience, actually hearing the sayings and skilled speech of the characters, as Hurston presents these same verbal skills being employed in a authentic exchange. These exchanges, which frame the actual tales told by the characters help to fill out the context in which the story might actually be told. Gold tells the first story to rile Gene who is upset with her because she is a woman who has insulted him in front of other men. Then, Mathilda tells the second story in response to the sexist comments made by the men who come to Gene's defense. In this way, the stories, which are indeed valuable in and of themselves, are not presented out of their environment, stripping away their functional meaning and their authenticity as full performances, they are presented in their natural habitat with the reactions of a dynamic audience so that every aspect of the full performative act can be appreciated. The audience plays a major part in the interaction which comprises the performance. Their expectations and evaluations are critical to the dynamic which constitutes the performative act. Bauman has written of this:

… I understand performance as a mode of communication, a way of speaking, the essence of which resides in the assumption of responsibility to an audience for a display of communicative skill, highlighting the way in which communication is carried out, above and beyond its referential content. From the point of view of the audience, the act of expression on the part of the performer is thus laid open to evaluation for the way it is done, for the relative skill and effectiveness of the performer's display. It is also offered for the enhancement of experience, through the present appreciation of the intrinsic qualities of the act of expression itself. Performance thus calls forth special attention to and heightened awareness of both the act of expression and the performer.

(1986: 3)

While this surrounding material elucidating the reactions of the audience helps to extend the mere retelling of a folktale into a complete performative representation, it is also important to note that this material itself can be seen as performance.

The exchange between Gold and Gene is probably closer to a model of performance because the expectation and evaluation of the audience is much more immediate in these exchanges. The participants respond to each other more frequently, often interrupting each other with short bursts that must be competent, or else each individual performer will be subject to the laughs and scorn of the entire audience. Unlike the telling of the folktales, which is uninterrupted and seamless, and must be bookended by the representation of evaluation and expectation, these quick fire exchanges are interpenetrated with dramatic dialogue and reaction that represent this aspect of the performance most clearly. The perception, however, is that these surrounding exchanges are what makes Mules and Men a questionable ethnography. The idea that these exchanges were not recorded verbatim at the exact time Hurston witnessed them creates problems for some critics because it seems to open the possibility that the material was made up or imagined by Hurston. She knew this would be a problem to scientists like Boas, and she wrote to him about writing an introduction for the book in 1934, “I have inserted the between-story conversation and business because when I offered it without it, every publisher said it was too monotonous. Now three houses want to publish it. So I hope that the unscientific matter that must be there for the sake of the average reader will not keep you from writing the introduction. It so happens that the conversations and incidents are true. But of course I never would have set them down for scientists to read” (Hemenway 1977: 163-64).

Hurston may have inserted this “unscientific matter” seemingly to satisfy her publishers and the “average reader,” but what might be seen as unscientific, in fact, turned out to be the most complete representation of African-American folkloric performance in the book. These “between-story” exchanges, which may appear to be less reliable than the presentation of the actual tales, are to the contrary, even more reliable in terms not only of representing performative events, but of establishing a predictive cultural pattern for their subsequent occurrence. It is my contention that these performative representations are the most valuable part of the entire book because they represent the performer in context, in the act of performing for an audience which expects him or her to be competent enough to showcase verbal skills which are satisfactorily executed. The audience's reactions, which are constantly being exhibited for the reader demonstrate the intricacies of this dynamic relationship. As Rosan Jordan has written in her perceptive reading of Hurston's work, “The characters are constantly performing: such items as proverbs, slang, nicknames, greetings, insults, and ritualized verbal routines are presented not as isolated texts, but as part of a given character's behavior in response to specific events on a specific a occasion” (1992: 112). Moreover, these performative representations give us even more than “specific events on a specific occasion,” they allow us to observe the manner and situations in which these elements might be used and thus allow us to understand how they might exhibit themselves on another occasion sometime in the future. So these partially fictionalized ethnographic models or composites function not just as snap-shot photos recording specific moments, but as predictive simulations which enable us to understand the possibility of when and where a particular kind of folkloric element might be employed over a long period of time.

Another wonderful example of this contextual grounding is the series of exchanges which take place when Zora is in Polk County.³ The men from the swamp-gang have taken Zora with them, intending to let her listen to the “lies” they tell while they work in the swamp. When they reach the place where the men usually meet the log train, the foreman informs them that there is to be no logging. Rather, the men are instead to go to the mill and inquire if help is needed there. The men are disappointed that they don't get a day off instead. Allen says to them, “‘Ain't dat a mean man? No work in the swamp and still he won't let us knock off’” (1935: 69). As the men walk with Zora in the direction of the mill feeling oppressed and overworked, they begin to tell tales about “Ole Massa and John.” Eugene Oliver gets Cliff started by invoking him to tell a story: “‘Go 'head and tell it, Cliff … Ah love to hear tales about Ole Massa and John. John sho was one smart nigger’” (1935: 69). Between the two stories that are told, Hurston provides the audience's reaction to the first: “Kah, Kah, Kah! Everybody laughing with their mouths wide open. If the foreman had come along right then he would have been good and mad because he could tell their minds were not on work. Joe Willard says: ‘Wait a minute, fellows, wese walkin' too fast. At dis rate we'll be there befo' we have time to talk some mo' about Ole Massa and John. Tell another one, Cliffert’.” At this point, Eugene Oliver decides to showcase his own skill by telling his own tale about John and Massa. But before Cliff can get started, Eugene hollers “‘Ah, naw,’” and then goes into an authentication of his own tale: “‘Let me talk some chat. Dis is de real truth 'bout Ole Massa 'cause my grandma told it to my mama and she told it to me’” (1935: 72). By locating his tale in oral tradition, Eugene creates the expectation in his audience that his will be a quality story since it is “de real truth,” and Jim Allen's boisterous laughter at the conclusion is no doubt a verification of Eugene's skill in the telling.

Both stories have to do with John's outwitting Ole Massa by lulling him into believing that he is a slow, silly, and dim-witted slave. Ole Massa, of course, has no trouble accepting this view of John because he is, after all, a Negro. In both stories, John subverts Ole Massa's power over him either by drawing him into his predicament or by escaping Ole Massa's own tricks with superior ones. The meaning and utility of these stories is drawn out, very fittingly, by the context within which they are framed by Hurston. The men who tell the stories are resentful of their foreman for not giving them the day off and at the same time are trying to avoid having to work for the “buckra” over at the saw mill. The reader can more clearly comprehend, when the tales are situated in this context, that these stories represent a way for downtrodden, overworked African-American men to imagine themselves in situations of power. Without the context Hurston provides, the tales are far less valuable to the reader or critic as an indicator of possible performative tendencies. In order to effectively employ the stories in this ethnographic model, they must be thought of as complete performance activities rather than just isolated textual recordings of single events. As Bauman writes of the importance of context, “Oral performance, like all human activity, is situated, its form, meaning, and functions rooted in culturally defined scenes or events—bounded segments of the flow of behavior and experience that constitute meaningful contexts for action, interpretation, and evaluation. In the ethnography of oral performance, the performance event has assumed a place beside the text as a fundamental unit of description and analysis, providing the most concretely empirical framework for the comprehension of oral literature as social action by directing attention to the actual conduct of artistic verbal performance in social life” (1986: 3).

For Bauman, the entire “performance event,” the performance and everything surrounding it which gives it its meaning, creates for the critic “the most concretely empirical framework” possible for understanding the event as representative of cultural or “social action.” Although Bauman may not be referring to a case like Hurston's, where the contextual material may include fictional components, his principle still applies. Jordan contends, “[Hurston's] strategy is designed to reveal the aesthetic significance of that performance while documenting the cultural and social context which nurtures it and endows it with meaning. Together, tales and context reveal a great deal of ethnographic information” (1992: 112). If whatever fictional elements Hurston included in this “performance” are plausible and acceptable, then the entire event still functions as a complete ethnographic model from which the critic can indeed draw valuable “ethnographic information.”

So the Hurston's “between-story” matter is not only essential to the interpretation of the performative event, it is in itself even more valuable than the folktales themselves as a model of performance. And if this can be said about the contextual material in Mules and Men, then certainly Their Eyes Were Watching God can be seen as an even more completely contextualized use of folkloric elements. Basically, the performative events in Their Eyes are all very similar to the surrounding contextual material contained in Mules and Men. As Hurston herself stated when Alain Locke criticized her use of folklore in Their Eyes as excessive, “There is not a folktale in the entire book” (Hemenway 1977: 242). This is certainly true, and yet there are several instances where the same kind of verbal exchanges that appear in Mules take place in Their Eyes. These contextualized performances are carefully woven into the fictional narrative and inextricably bound to it. They may be subordinated to novelistic elements, but they are there just the same. These fully contextualized performances are even superior to the ones we see in Mules and Men because the contextualization is greater. Why? Because these events have more than just episodic action enclosing them; they are fully integrated into the story of the novel so that character, plot, conflict, and action are all dependent upon these events. Each one of these elements contextualize the others, generating an even greater meaning than could be garnered from the more isolated events depicted in Mules and Men. Miriam DeCosta Willis has addressed this very point: “Folk Dialogue, involving the use of Southern dialect, verbal duels, rhyming, improvisations, sounding, woofing, and playing the dozens, is important in this work, as it was in Hurston's earlier plays, short stories and writings on folklore. In this novel, however, the folk dialogue is much more than mere verbal adornment; it is intrinsic to the meaning of the work” (1983: 90).

Indeed, one of the main themes of the book, Janie's subversion by a patriarchal society is expressed through Jody Stark's refusal to allow her to participate in any of the verbal activities performed on the front porch of his store simply because she is a woman and because she is his wife. When the men lie and play checkers, Jody absolutely denies Janie the right to join in. Hemenway writes, “Janie's verbal freedom might not seem such an important matter on the surface, but the reader should remember Hurston's conception of the store porch as a stage for the presentation of black folklore” (1977: 439). Sam, Walter, Charlie Jones, and others sit on the porch nearly everyday engaged in feats of lying, acting-out, and signifying while Janie must remain either in the store working or in the background in silence.

The men test their verbal skills on each other, telling elaborate lies about any and everything while Jody Starks presides over the festivities like a peaceful monarch, silently bestowing favor:

The porch was boiling now. Starks left the store to Hezekiah Potts, the delivery boy, and come took a seat in his high chair.

“Look at dat great big ole scoundrel-beast up dere at Hall's fillin' station—uh great big old scoundrel. He wats up all de folks outa de house and den eat de house.”

“Aw 'tain't no sich a varmint nowhere sat kin eat no house! Dat's uh lie. Ah wuz dere yister'ddy and Ah ain't seen nothin' lak dat. Where is he?”

“Ah didn't see him but Ah reckon he is in de back-yard some place. But dey got his picture out front dere. They was nailin' it up when Ah come pass dere dis even'.”

“Well all right now, if he eats up houses how come he don't eat up the fillin' station?”

“Dat's 'cause dey got him tied up so he can't. Dey got uh great big picture tellin' how many gallons of dat Sinclair high-compression gas he drink at one time and how he's more'n uh million years old.”

“'Tain't nothin' no million years old!”

“De picture is right up dere where anybody kin see it. Dey can't make de picture till dey see de thing, kin dey?”

“How dey goin' to tell he's uh million years old? Nobody wasn't born dat fur back.”

“By de rings on his tail Ah reckon. Man dese white folks got ways for tellin' anything dey wants tuh know.”

“Well, where he been at all dis time, then?”

“Dey caught him over dere in Egypt. Seem lak he used tuh hang round dere and eat up dem Pharaohs' tombstones. Dey got de picture of him doin' it. Nature and salt. Dat's what makes up strong man lak Big John de Conquerer. He was uh man wid salt in him. He could give flavor to anything.”

“Yeah, but he was uh man dat wuz more'n man. 'Tain't no mo' lak him. He wouldn't dig potatoes, and he wouldn't take hay: He wouldn't take a whipping, and he wouldn't run away.”

“Oh, yeah, somebody else could if dey tried hard enough. Me mahself, Ah got salt in me. If Ah like man flesh, Ah could eat some man every day, some of 'em is so trashy they'd let me eat 'em.”

“Lawd, Ah loves to talk about Big John. Less we tell lies on Ole John.”

(1937: 62-3)

The porch becomes a cauldron of exaggeration and hyperbole, a central location from which the townspeople conduct all important business, not by parliamentary procedure, but by folkloric discourse. They speak in traditional sayings and they challenge each other verbally. To triumph on the porch is to demonstrate superior verbal prowess. According to Jody, it is the domain of men, and women need only participate as silent, but attractive, ornaments. Janie must remain in relative silence on the porch and elsewhere, enduring Jody's stinging admonishment, “You gettin' too moufy, Janie,” when she dares to “thrust herself into the conversation” (1937: 70-1). Eventually, she asserts her own verbal dominance over Jody when she emasculates him verbally in the store telling him, “You big-bellies round here and put out a lot of brag, but 'tain't nothin' to it but yo' big voice. Humph! Talkin' 'bout me lookin' old! When you pull down yo' britches, you look lak de change uh life.” Sam Watson responds to Janie's verbal attack on Jody, gasping, “Great God from Zion! … Y'all really playin' de dozens tonight.” Jody can hardly respond to this vicious attack and the others in the store exacerbate his suffering by testifying to the skillfulness of Janie's commentary. Walter comments, “You heard her, you ain't blind,” and Lige Moss adds, “Ah ruther be shot with tacks than tuh hear dat 'bout mahself” (1937: 75). Just as in Mules and Men the folkloric performance here is used to highlight the conflict between male and female. Janie had done more than just insult Jody by signifying on him, “she had cast down his empty armor before men and they had laughed, would keep on laughing” (1937: 75).

The major difference between the events in Mules and Men and this event in Their Eyes is that it is even more completely contextualized in the novel setting. The reader is much more familiar with the characters involved; he or she also has extensive knowledge of each of the participant's social situations up to this point; the reader fully understands the relationship between Janie and Jody; and he or she comprehends the degree to which Jody has been wounded by Janie's verbal attack in front of an audience. The reader actually has a much greater understanding of how this scene operates as a composite ethnographic model—and we must think of it that way—as a model. Certainly, it could never be claimed that any event like this actually ever happened, but this fictional event can serve as a model, operating as Bauman understands the complete performance event does. Within each individual event, there exists “general structures” which are “common to all” performance events. He writes further: “Events in these terms are not frozen, predetermined molds for performance but are themselves situated social accomplishments in which structures and conventions may provide precedents and guidelines for the range of alternatives possible” (1986: 4). What makes the performance event as it appears in Their Eyes superior in this regard is that since the event was constructed by Hurston to be an “authentic, fictional representation of Eatonville” (Hemenway 1977: 231), it contains more of these “general structures” than would an actual recorded event that was simply reproduced on the page. Since Hurston, presumably, modeled these events not after one specific event she had witnessed, but instead after general cultural knowledge she had accumulated from carefully observing several events in intimate settings over a long period of time, utilizing a sort of deductive method of composition, the event most likely, then, contains fewer markers or details specific only to one, individual event. Because the representations of these events are compiled from a general knowledge of a multitude of events in order to make the episodes credible and authentic, they are more likely to represent a multitude of events rather than just one. This increases the utility of these events for predicting a future range of possible alternatives, to borrow a phrase from Bauman.

Take for example, on the Muck, when Ed Dockery, Bootyny, and Sopde-Bottom are embroiled in a “skin game,” everyone gathers around to listen to them “woof” and “boogerboo”:

Ed Dockery was dealing one night and he looked over at Sop-de-Bottom's card and he could tell Sop thought he was going to win. He hollared, “Ah'll break up dat settin' uh eggs.” Sop looked and said, “Root de peg.” Bootyny asked, “What are you goin' tuh do? Do do!” Everybody was watching the next card fall. Ed got ready to turn. “Ah'm gointuh sweep out hell and burn up de broom.” He slammed down another dollar. “Don't oversport yourself, Ed,” Bootyny challenged. “You gittin' too yaller.” Ed caught hold of the corner of the card. Sop dropped a dollar. “Ah'm gointuh shoot in de hearse, don't keer how sad de funeral be.” Ed said, “You see how this man is teasin' hell?” Tea Cake nudged Sop not to bet. “You gointuh get caught in uh bullet storm if you don't watch out.” Sop said, “Aw Œtain't nothin' tuh dat bear but his curly hair. Ah can look through muddy water and see dry land.” Ed turned off the card and hollared, “Zachariah, Ah says come down out dat sycamore tree. You can't do no business.” Nobody fell on that card. Everybody was scared of the next one. Ed looked around and saw Gabe standing behind his chair and hollared, “Move from over me, Gabe! You too black. You draw heat! Sop, you wanta pick up dat bet whilst you got uh chance?” “Naw, man, Ah wish Ah had uh thousand-leg tuh put on it.” “So yuh won't lissen, huh? Dumb niggers and free schools. Ah'm gointuh take and teach yuh, Ah'll main-line but I won't side-track.” Ed flipped the next card and Sop fell and lost. Everybody hollared and laughed. Ed laughed and said, “Git off de muck! You ain't nothin'. Dat's all! Hot boilin' water won't help yuh none.” Ed kept on laughing because he had been so scared before. “Sop, Bootyny, all y'all dat lemme win yo' money: Ah'm sending it straight off to Sears and Roebuck and buy me some clothes, and when Ah turn out Christmas day, it would take a doctor to tell me how near Ah is dressed tuh death.”

(1937: 128-9)

Although it would be impossible to claim that this rich exchange was the actual transcript of a skin game that Hurston actually witnessed taking place, it would not be out of the realm of possibility to use this skin game as a predictive model of what skin games might be like. The men rocket back and forth at each other with coded expressions like “Root de peg” and “You gittin' too yaller” (1937: 128). When taken as a performative event, acted out before an audience with certain expectations of competence, this event becomes an accurate and authentic composite ethnographic model with predictive possibilities. Again, this is what makes Their Eyes a superior ethnographic model even to Mules and Men. The predictive range of possibilities is greater for this book. It is much less a reservoir of tales or saying than is Mules, which is itself superior in that regard to Hurston's earlier work. Their Eyes Were Watching God represents a development in Hurston's style of cultural representation. By extending the contextualization of folkloric material, even to the point of situating that material within a fictional framework, Hurston creates an extremely reliable and valuable form of ethnography that should not be dismissed. Despite the fact that the folkloric elements in Their Eyes are subordinated to the elements of the book which make it a novel, we should not forget that the elements to which the folklore is subordinated, in fact, constitute the contextual material which allows the reader to more fully comprehend the complexity of folkloric elements as expressed in performative events. So Hurston's movement from her early scientific ethnographic work, which was relatively uncontextualized; to Mules and Men, which is significantly more so; to Their Eyes Were Watching God, which is supremely contextualized, represents a development in her writing and an improvement on her ability to represent the fully contextualized performative event in the text. It seems that all Hurston really wanted to do was to represent the culture of African Americans in Eatonville and southern Florida the best and most accurate way she knew how. In the past, folklorists might have tended to say that she did that most convincingly in her first ethnographic articles, but I would contend that Hurston, who demonstrated throughout her life a mastery of the knowledge associated with the study of African-American folklore, more closely represented the fullness of that culture in Their Eyes Were Watching God, a novel. The development in Hurston's ethnographic representation was not only innovative at the time she was writing, it is innovative now, at this very moment. In the last twenty-five years or so, as Hurston's works have come back into print and have joined the canon, debate has still raged over the form of her books, especially Mules and Men, and folklorists have almost completely resisted the idea of reading Their Eyes as ethnography. However, in the wake of new artists who are presenting ethnography in new and creative fashions, Hurston will have to be reconsidered as a legitimate and superior caretaker of the African-American folkloric tradition. Her books, whether considered fiction or fictionalized will have to at least be considered when the word “ethnography” is spoken. In my opinion, Hurston was far ahead of her time in the late thirties and even today; she is a pioneer in the field of folklore studies, a rebellious mind still challenging the standards of a stringent scientific system which should be more receptive to innovative ethnographic experimentation.

Notes

1. When I refer to Mules and Men, I am only referring to Part I of the book which deals with the folklore of southern Florida. Since I wanted to show a kind of progression from this book to Their Eyes Were Watching God, I thought it appropriate only to refer to the first part of Mules, which for all intents and purposes, operates as a contained narrative unit.

2. Due to the extensive length of these two folktales, I elected not to include them in this paper, but the full text of both can be found in Mules and Men on page 29 (“Why Negroes Are Black”) and page 31 (“Why Women Always Take Advantage of Men”).

3. Another criticism that has been made of Zora Neale Hurston method in Mules and Men is her decision to include herself in the work. Specifically, she tells of her travels through the different counties, her interactions with her subjects, her discomfort with certain field situations, and even of a few white lies she tells to avoid certain social complications. For some scholars, this placement of the self at the center of Mules significantly impedes Hurston's ability to objectively render the culture she is supposed to be representing. In my opinion, this criticism is severely flawed because it assumes first, that it is possible to be objective in any attempt at cultural representation whether it be etic or emic; second, that so-called “objective” ethnography is superior in any way to ethnography which embraces the supposedly less scientific subjectivity of self; and third, that it is ever possible to remove the self from ethnography at any time. The third assumption is the most important here. As ethnographers, we often assume that if we are able to erase ourselves from our writing we will somehow be able to construct a “cleaner” ethnography, one with the pollution of the self somehow filtered out. I strongly believe that this is an impossibility and that those who attempt it, who claim that they are putting the needs, desires, or feelings of their subjects first are only deluding themselves. Ultimately, ethnography, in whatever form it takes, is an exercise in self-exploration for the ethnographer. The writer who purports to be writing about others is really writing about herself. She is writing about her reaction to being immersed in a foreign culture, about her ability or inability to cope with difficult situations, her tendency to cling to that which is familiar, her struggle to suppress the instinct to position her subject as the other, and her understanding of herself as a human being existing in a particular culture and in the world. Ethnographers consistently deny this reality and delude themselves into thinking that their ethnography is free from the taint of self, but they cannot escape it. It lies just under the cloak of scientific rhetoric, in the manner of description, in the faintest nuance of analysis. I think Zora's decision to embrace and celebrate herself in her ethnography is not a flaw in her method, it is a triumph of honest self understanding.

Works Cited

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———. Their Eyes Were Watching God. 1937. New York: Harper and Row.

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