Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston

Synopsis: Memoirs of a celebrated writer, novelist born in the ‘silent gen’ era. 

Writing Style: Vintage. Timeless. Humorous.

Pacing: Moderate. 

Personal Highlights: In the event I'm not absolutely last reading this already highly lauded memoir, the writing is fabulous! That’s first. My eyes got so tangled reading prose covered by the “map of Dixie on her tongue” and folk “talking all over their face” that I was just about reading a sentence a day. A classic book to curl up with for sure.

The story of her birth drew me in, and while the early stories surrounding her imagination were dramatically long, animating common household items and turning these parodies into stories, they were necessaries to explaining how Hurston’s writing evolved. Axioms, entertaining throughout! ‘How she get in? ‘Dat axe was her key!’ And the dramatization of the fights she had with her stepmothers, along with how she studied under this one and that one …making tracks up and down, and back and forth criss-crossing the country will keep readers engaged. But what stayed in my head, like it stuck in her craw, was the bit about slavery. Being told (by Africans how and why) there are no descendants of royal African blood among American Negroes I read with care. 

Hurston truly covered a lot of territory. Reading “trashy” books didn’t harm her, but instead built sturdy reading habits. She wanted to go to school, and …finally… she just went. Ha! The chapter ‘Books & Things’ was another siren, which speaking of ‘things’, used repetitively and hypnotically, fascinated me as much as her approach to racial understanding …‘how people no matter the color respond similar to specific stimuli…’ PowWow! She said that! My People! My People! Just powerful, even if I may have, not funny, laughed hardest at the humble Negro prayer …prayed no one, of course. 

Overall, I can go on and on and on. From the stories she wrote on blackboards... like how big was this blackboard? Or how small was her penmanship? And those scholars looking at the board, for their character… was as provocative as the acceptance of her first novel, handwritten, to the events leading up to its publication. Keeping in mind, we’re talking the 30’s. I’m saying her presence of mind and the way she expresses herself wholly won me over. Listen, “if you don’t have it, you can’t show it.” But “if you got it, you can’t hide it.” Writers/Aspiring writers who haven't read this one, should. Highly recommended. Read paperback, 1985/2020 copyright edition (introduction by Jesmyn Ward).