Rediscovering Zora’s Contradictions

Abstract

The recent rediscovery of five short-stories published by Zora Neale Hurston more than eighty years ago in the Pittsburgh Courier, and virtually forgotten ever since, is a perfect occasion to take a fresh look at an African-American writer whose critical success has steadily subsided since the final years of the twentieth century. Together with a couple of interesting, previously unpublished letters, Hurston’s short stories, all of them set in Harlem, essentially confirm her versatility with scenes of urban black life, while at the same time shed new light on the close relationship between her ambivalent, controversial personality and a number of characters created by her pen.