Published in 1993 (first published 1979)
320 pages
Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) was a writer and anthropologist originally from the South, who became a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston is the author of the classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, as well as countless other volumes of fiction, poetry, and scholarly nonfiction. Her nonfiction book Barracoon, about the transatlantic slave trade, was published posthumously in 2018.
Alice Walker is a poet, writer, and activist. She is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for The Color Purple, and author of multiple novels, short stories, children’s books, essays, and poetry collections, including 2018’s Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart. Walker’s works have been translated into more than two dozen languages worldwide.
Mary Helen Washington is Distinguished University Professor in the English Department at the University of Maryland, College Park. Professor Washington specializes in twentieth- and twenty-first-century African American literature. She has edited several influential collections, including Black-Eyed Susans and Midnight Birds: Stories by and About Black Women and Invented Lives: Narratives of Black Women 1860–1960.
What is this book about?
“Through Hurston, the soul of the black South gained one of its most articulate interpreters.” —New York Times
During her lifetime, Zora Neale Hurston was praised for her writing but condemned for her independence and audacity. Her work fell into obscurity until the 1970s, when Alice Walker rediscovered Hurston’s unmarked grave and anthologized her writing in this groundbreaking collection for the Feminist Press.
I Love Myself When I Am Laughing… And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive established Hurston as an intellectual leader for future generations of black writers A testament to the power and breadth of Hurston’s oeuvre, this edition—newly reissued for the Feminist Press’s fiftieth anniversary—features a new preface by Walker.
This unique anthology, with fourteen superb examples of her fiction, journalism, folklore, and autobiography, rightfully establishes her as the intellectual and spiritual leader of the next generation of black writers. The original commentary by Alice Walker and Mary Helen Washington, two African-American writers in the forefront of the Hurston revival, provide illuminating insights into Hurston—the writer, and the person—as well as into American social and cultural history.
