The Muse of Zora

Dear Zora Neale Hurston,

I'm trying to understand your writing. I want to hear the echos of the muse that you heard and analyze the colloquial phrasing of his voice.

I think that Richard Wright and Langston Hughes heard a different muse and gave voice to a disparate philosophic song. Richard and Langston took on themselves a responsibility that related to the future places that the Afrian American people as a group would have to go. But you, I think, couldn't let go of the grasp you had of where the people had been, not let go without writing it down, just once, writing it down. That, you said in your way, in your tongue, was worth writing.

That, you wanted people to understand, was worth saying in unvarnished speech . . . saying it like it had been said, over and over again by the pepole in the fields, by the people back to the cabin from the big house, by the people no longer owned but forced to sell themselves one day at a time, by those people who could still laugh and talk about the new shoes they got from the devil, who had the ugliest, who had the biggest, who had the richest soil, mule, hat, cat, master. Those words, those stories, those thinkings had to be preserved. That is what your muse said one day isn't it? Your muse said:

There once was a slave named Jack, and oh he could play tricks on his master. But that slave was going to die, so he set up a contest with the devil. The devil said he would give Jack a pair of brand new shoes and a mule to carry him to heaven if he would sprinkle a potion in the spring where all the former slave folk drank. That potion wouldn't make them forget, but it would make them hate to write that story down. Jack got a gourd and filled it with clear spring water. Then he fouled the spring with the devil's potion.

"Good job Jack," said the devil, and gave him his new shoes and the ugliest mule you ever saw. The last the devil saw of Jack he was astride that mule legs outstretched so not to drag his new shoes in the mud. Jack was headed for heaven, but what the devil didn't know was that he stopped by your house, Zora, and gave you the gourd and whispered in your ear, "Now write it down."

Thanks for your work, making sure the last legacy of the era that a part of us wants so desperately to forget, will be passed on.

BRD

PS Did I tell you I named a racoon after you? Her husband was named Zorro so it seemed right.