Zora
This story almost lost me at the begining because of the difficult language that I was unfamiliar with. I had to stop and look up words, and that broke up the flow for me. Having read the entire story though, the language picked is essential to forming the picture of Haitian life and culture. The story is extremley detail oriented, even down to Dr. Legros's conversation about politics. Once again, this story is given enough details to make it appear real. Even once we learn of the zombie, because of the detailed and realistic precedings, I found myself wondering if this could possibly be true. Andy- Why Zora? What connection do you feel to her? Have you met her? Has she ever really had an encouter similar to this? Have you? Have you ever been to Haiti? How much research did this story take? Is Freida turning the people into zombies? Is Freida representative of Erzulie?I feel that you have included wonderful comic relief, as with the literal interpretation of the road signs. I enjoyed your story- I was never bored, never left without a picture in my mind, and i never would have guessed the ending.
posted by Anonymous at 1:43 PM
3 Comments:
First, I must admit that before this story, my only knowledge of Zora Neale Hurston was the fact that the middle school in Ghostwriter was named after her and that she was an early 20th Century American author. Reading this story makes me want to learn more about her. Andy, did you pattern fictional Zora's personality after real Zora's?
I like your answer, Elizabeth. I never thought of Erzulie in those terms before, but you're right, there's more than one way to make a zombie.
"I was never bored, never left without a picture in my mind, and I never would have guessed the ending."
This is high praise indeed! Thanks.
I never met Zora, as she died four years before I was born, but I "met" her through her work in graduate school at North Carolina State University, when one of my classmates did a presentation on her short story "Story in Harlem Slang." That led me to her other short stories, including at least one masterpiece ("The Eatonville Anthology"), and her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God and her books of folklore, including Tell My Horse (in which she tells of her travels in Haiti) and the marvelously titled Mules and Men.
"Why Zora?" is an excellent question, one I tried and failed to answer in class. She was a larger-than-life figure, she did remarkable work that observed no genre boundaries (even the division between "fiction" and "non-fiction" is hard to draw in Hurston's writing), she was one of the most celebrated women in America but died poor, alone and forgotten, and she has enjoyed an amazing posthumous acclaim. But clearly I identify with her and her mission on some deep level, one that I find very hard to articulate. Ask me again in 10 years or so.
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