Black History Month: Zora Neale Hurston

Twenty years ago, you would have been hard pressed to find anyone who knew who Zora Neale Hurston was. Today her legacy is vibrantly alive, at least in university English departments. Contemporary writers like Toni Morrison would not be able to do what they do without Hurston first laying the ground work.

Hurston's reputation mainly lies on her brilliant novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937. She is also revered for her short fiction, such as "Gilded Six-Bits." Equally compelling is Hurston's work as a social anthopologist. Mules and Men is her most renowned book in this genre and remains a fascinating read.

Although I haven't read it, Hurston did write a play with Langston Hughes, posthumously published by Henry Louis Gates in 1991 and titled Mule Bone. Judging by her other work, it is probably worth checking out.

Black History Month: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is a noted literary scholar whose lasting impact will likely lie in a brilliant book called The Signifying Monkey. The Signifying Monkey is a Yoruban folk legend, popularized in America by toasting (toasting being a method of rhymed story-telling that predates rap) stand-up comics such as Rudy Ray Moore (Dolemite!) about a monkey being hunted by both an elephant and a lion. The monkey outsmarts them both by engaging in a verbal game tells signifying. He tricks them into fighting one another, and therefore is able to not only survive, but move up on the totem pole as his predators destroy each other, leaving room for him to move up.

The story is metaphoric. If the monkey represents the African-American, then through language and literacy, they are able to keep those above them busy and thus unobtrusively move up. Signifying is broader than that, though, encompassing a wide range of verbal strategies that allow someone lacking power to momentarily gain it, especially by twisting language which was originally that of the oppressor.

The signifying monkey becomes a motif that has moved throughout African-American history, either consciously or unconsciously, and is a strategy that can be seen at work in the writing of almost every major African-American literary figure, as well as many rap artists. Henry Louis Gates is responsible for pointing the way to a broader understanding of how it is used.