I have always loved Zora Neale Hurston and with the publishing of some of her essay from out of print magazine and other mediums it was a pleasure to read more of her writing. She was ahead of her time.

A critical work of essays, so lucky to have been able to read and review it. I teach a course in nonfiction and intend on using this book in my classroom.

This brilliant collection contains some of the most brilliant and controversial of Zora Neale Hurston's writing. While there's no denying how amazing Their Eyes Were Watching God is, Hurston feels most at home in magazine-length writing.

This posthumous collection of essays from Hurston crackles with her wry observations on society. I welcomed the opportunity to dive into the brain of such a writer like Hurston.

When writers are as beloved as Zora Neale Hurston, it’s pure delight to stumble on random facts about their personal lives: letters, vignettes, observations of contemporaries -- anything that offers context about who they were, how they fit in their society, what motivated them.
You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays supplied all that aplenty. I wasn't reading it for the academic content (citations, end notes and so on), but for insight into 1) what kind of a person Hurston was and 2) how she got that way. The first answer is: she was a multi-talented spitfire. The second is: she was born black and female into a condescending dominant white culture.
"Two hundred and forty-six years of outward submission during slavery time got folks to thinking of us as creatures of tasks alone," she wrote in one of her essays.
Despite her beginnings, in her lifetime Hurston earned respect as a thinker, a novelist, an activist, a literary critic – even a newspaper correspondent, covering the 1952 trial of Ruby McCollum, a black woman accused of killing her white lover – with the courtroom still segregated nearly 90 years after emancipation.
This collection has abundant examples of her acid wit and astute political commentary, as in “For when a woman is perfectly frank with men, they do not rise up and bless her. Nay, they rise up and run!” and “It is well known that there is nothing people know that is one-half so precious as what they want to believe.”
Reader’s tip: If you’re just in it for the pure-Hurston content, skip the lengthy, solid, scholarly introduction; or – here’s a thought: Go back and read the introduction after you’ve sped through all the ZNH material, to give you an excellent frame of reference.
Thanks to NetGalley and Amistad for an ARC.

You Don't Know Us Negroes is an excellent collection of essays by Zora Neale Hurston that spans across 35+ years (1922-1958). Seven of the essays were published in this book for the first time. In this collection you will see her anthropologist's work in her essays on Black expression (language, dancing, etc.), the Black church experience, and culture. One of my favorite and unforgettable essays was "The Chick with One Hen", in it Hurston writes a brutal critique of Dr. Alain Locke who had previously criticized her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston was adamant that Locke did not really know Black folks as well as she did, she even said that she would send her toenails to debate Locke on Black folks, that line made me laugh every time I read it.

My favorite section of the book was "On Politics", where Hurston write on various political issues, foreign and domestic. Hurston's views on race and civil rights were complex and in some cases more conservative than I believe most Black people were at the time. She was anti-Brown v. Board of Education not because she advocated for segregation but because she felt that all-Black schools were good as long as they were adequate or had the same resources as all-white schools. She was also an anticommunist and was not a fan of the NAACP. At times she shares opinions of the Reconstruction period that mirrors the racist Lost Cause and Dunning School's view. I enjoyed her analysis and wit in these essays, although there were parts where I disagreed with her politics.

The final section of the book covers her reporting of the 1950s Ruby McCollum trial. Readers get a detailed account of the trial and Ruby McCollum's life story. If you read closely enough you will even read some language that echoes language Hurston used in Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Overall, this was an excellent collection. In my opinion, some of the essays could have been left out and more context could have been given at the beginning of each essay, outside of the Introduction by Gates and West. When I finished this book, I came to the conclusion that I love Zora Neale Hurston as a writer and thinker and I can't wait to dive into her other books that I haven't read yet.

When you read a series of essays from the 1930s one might assume the content or the perspective to be dated. One might read it as a reflection on how far we have come. One would be wrong. Zora Neale Hurston's essays are eerily prescient to our current time. These essays focus on the strength of Black humor, how American society is built on the back of Black art, the domination of Black subjects by White authors, stolen creativity, and the lifting up of only some people as an exception rather than the rule. Hurston's essays sometimes use old-fashioned and outdated terminology, but the subject topics can feel like they were written yesterday.

Here we find essays about John de Conquerer, a man who doesn't have the power to set people free, but free minds and fool those in power. Essays that demonstrate the rich inner mind to create, to hope, and to build while the body is forced to perform menial tasks. The mind is set free. Essays on Black creativity such as the invention of Jazz and how many white performers tried to co-opt it as their own (so similar to today's stolen Tik Tok dances). How White people can create an example that proves one's progressive nature but hides a racist heart. Even the essay about the worst Jim Crow experience that did not happen in the South but in a New York doctor's office. The last quarter of the book details a murder trial and Hurston's shocking epiphany of how race and power can control every aspect of life.

These essays should not be relevant today. These could have been written yesterday. An important collection to bring to light with some of these essays never published and others almost lost to history.

I’ve always been a fan of Zora Neale Hurston. While I usually gravitate toward her fiction, I very much enjoyed this collection of essays, which were thought provoking and well written.

Absolutely loved this collection of Zora Neale Hurston’s work. A collection of articles, essays and critical pieces on various topics. Hurston’s anthropologist background really shines through in these pieces highlighting her observations on black culture, language, folklore, education, etc.

The last section of this book is a collection of articles Hurston wrote documenting the murder trial of Ruby McCollum. I’m honestly surprised I’ve never heard of this case before. Hurston’s courtroom observations and descriptions of the proceedings make you feel like you are right there!

Thank you @amistadbooks and @netgalley for the advanced copy. This one is worth adding to you collection!!!

-So if we look at it squarely, the Negro is a very original being. While he lives and moves in the midst of a white civilisation, everything that he touches is re-interpreted for his own use. He has modified the language, mode of food preparation, practice of medicine, and most certainly the religion of his new country, just as he adapted to suit himself the Sheik hair-cut made famous by Rudolph Valentino.

This collection of essays by Zora Hurston were phenomenal. The collection spans 40 years of her nonfiction works that were either never published or the works are now out of print. In this collection we see news pieces, opinion pieces, book reviews, critiques on other author’s works, musings on life, love, liberty, education, black vernacular, black agency, and black arts. One of the most interesting series of essays were about Ruby McCollum’s trial. Ruby McCollum was a black woman of the elite class sentenced to the electric chair for murdering her white lover, a prominent physician. The case was of interest because she and her lover with both also married and interracial mixing at that time was still very taboo.

My favorites from Part One were High John de Conqueror and Characteristics of Negro Expression. My favorites were Part Two were On Art and Such and The South Was Had. My favorites from part three were Race Cannot Be Great Until It Recognizes Its Talent and What White Publishers Won’t Print. In What White Publishers Won’t Print, she expounds on the many ways white readers and publishers have shown us that they have no desire to read about the full range of black existence. I find that to still be true even today. Part Four: On Politics is one of the most searing collections and one of the most important in this book. It’s scary how many of the things she is discussing still holds true today as it pertains to black voters. It also shines a light on her Republican political views. The last section about Ruby McCollum was very interesting and the way the story unfolded, you felt like you were right there in the courtroom watching her former friends side with the white physician she murdered and seeing blacks who envied her life get to see a well to do black woman fall from grace. I will be researching more about this incident thanks to this book.

Overall, this book is everything I expected for it to be. It shows the full range of Ms. Hurston’s talent, as well as her immense growth as a writer, thinker, and observer of black life. If you love her work, do yourself a favor and read this collection.

I enjoyed this nonfiction collection from Zora Neal Hurston. This was my first time reading any of her works, and I'm sure it won't be the last.

This collection is divided into five parts:

Part 1: On the Folk
Part 2: On "Art and Such"
Part 3: On Race and Gender
Part 4: On Politics
Part 5: On the Trial of Ruby McCollum

My favorite parts were the essays on politics and the trial of Ruby McCollum. Zora Neal Hurston has some interesting thoughts on politics and the political landscape and some of her arguments I have never heard before and am still thinking about. Specifically about her thoughts on the desegregation of schools and the NAACP. Part five is about Ruby McCollum, a black woman sentenced to death for killing a white doctor with who she had a relationship. I found the author's retelling of the trial interesting, and I had never heard about this case before.

Overall, I liked this collection of essays. Some of them moved a little slow for me, but all-in-all I thought the essays were interesting and worth reading.

Thank you Amistad for this Netgalley ARC!

A wonderful compilation of essays, articles and stories by ZNH that everyone can enjoy. Definitely every fan will love the opportunity to read more of Hurston's writings, but learning more about Hurston herself as she reports on the world around her is truly a treat. Topics ranging from folklore to Reconstruction, political movements and figures. Reading about her views in her own words gives us lucky readers a chance to know Hurston as she would want us to know her - her own self. For all the topics she covers in these writings, this book is a welcome contribution to historical and cultural writings. Highly recommend.

This new publication gathers together essays by Zora Neale Hurston, now annotated with footnotes on relevant events and people, information that may be lost to distance and years but would have been familiar to readers at the time of publication.

Hurston's range is apparent, and her humor and wit are on display. There's a scathing, condescending review of a short story volume of Richard Wright's (readers are informed in a footnote that he had widely panned Their Eyes Were Watching God). We read an insightful essay comparing the (poor) substitute of margarine to butter and likening it to poor caricatures of Blacks in the arts.

The changing times are on display in "The Lost Keys is Glory." It starts with a parable of how men and women were created fully equal in every way, then concessions were made to enhance men's strength and then, later, to grant women the keys (to cradle, kitchen, bedroom), and through this tension they found ways to live together and use their strengths to gain what they desired from the other. But the essay morphs into an analysis of men's superiority and how wives must tread lightly when considering employment outside of the home, how such decisions could give them a misguided focus on priorities and lead their husbands to lose interest in them (a curious piece to analyze, given Hurston married -- and divorced -- three husbands).

In "I Saw Negro Votes Peddled," Hurston holds her peers to account, calling them out for selling votes and ignoring the possible impact they could have. She minces no words when she's challenging others to do better.

There are so many more topics, but the final section is a series of articles she wrote that illuminated a murder trial where a rich black women was charged with killing her white lover. Through courtroom accounts and interviews, Hurston pieces together particulars of the story.

As one who had limited exposure to Hurston's work previously, having only read her memoir, I enjoyed diving into this expansive collection, as Hurston demonstrates her skill as a journalist and an anthropologist.

(I received a digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.)

“Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world – I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”

“Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company! It’s beyond me.”

This book is a collection of essays, book reviews and articles by Zora Neale Hurston. Some were never published before. Hurston was both an astute observer of life (and a trained anthropologist) and an expressive and skillful writer. The pieces in this book cover a broad range including an interview with the last survivor of the last slave ship, Negro representation in the arts, politics, spirituals, voodoo, corrupt voter registration, Communism, noses (2 essays) and the chronicle of a murder trial.

The author discusses stereotypes in literature and entertainment. “Whenever I pick up one of the popular magazines and read one of these mammy cut tales I often wonder whether the author actually believes that his tale is probable or whether he knows it is flapdoodle and is merely concerned about the check.” She makes her case for the inherent problem in excluding realistic, un-exaggerated portrayals of minorities in all aspects of the arts and entertainment, as well as in history lessons. Please just let minorities be simply as boring and unexceptional as everyone else, and stop being “other”. “But for the national welfare, it is urgent to realize that the minorities do think, and think about something other than the race problem. That they are very human and internally, according to natural endowment, are just like everybody else. So long as this is not conceived, there must remain that feeling of unsurmountable difference, and difference to the average man means something bad. If people were made right, they would be just like him.”

In her review of “Uncle Tom’s Children” by Richard Wright, she damns him with faint praise. After saying “not one act of understanding and sympathy comes to pass in the entire work.” She wrote : But some bright new lines to remember come flashing from the author’s pen. Some of his sentences have the shocking power of a forty-four. That means that he knows his way around among words. With his facility, one wonders what he would have done had he dealt with plots that touched the broader and more fundamental phases of Negro life instead of confining himself to the spectacular.” She was a tough critic generally. She found that race hatred was too often the central theme of works by Negro authors “just as how the stenographer or some other poor girl won the boss or the boss’s son is the favorite white theme”. She also criticizes Wright for having Communist leanings and for his poor use of dialect (“Certainly he does not write by ear unless he is tone-deaf.”) In addition , Hurston wrote a previously unpublished takedown of Dr. Alain Leroy Locke after he criticized “Their Eyes Were Watching God”. (“… he rushes at any chance to see his name in print, however foolish his offering”).

Hurston is a woman I would have liked to have known.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

A powerful book of essays - Zora Neale Hurston is one of my favorite writers. This collection is eye-opening and emotional. She was controversial and outspoken with a most distinctive voice

I always have loved Hurston and was very interested in this collection of essays. I was able to walk away with even more authors to read and I will enjoy this collection for years to come.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC which I received in return for an honest review.

This book is a collection of essays by Zora Neale Hurston covering a variety of topics including the trial of Ruby McCollum, a black woman sentenced to the electric chair for killing her lover, a white doctor.

These essays were very interesting, and I would have liked to see them juxtaposed with some modern day essays because sadly some thing haven't changed much. One of my favorite essays was "The Rise of the Begging Joints." These are private schools for blacks where the administration spends most of its time fundraising than providing quality education. Sadly, educational institutions still prey on the black population. ITT Tech, which had the same classes as community college but double the price (and with loan shark lending practices as well) had nearly double the black population as the community college. When will these "universities" be shut down? How can these institutions of higher education graduate 250 political science majors knowing full well that there are only 3 political science jobs that pay a living wage? Then, we blame the new graduate for not knowing better when they were teenagers, first generation college students, who should have somehow known better than the college?

Another essay that I found very interesting was "I Saw Negro Votes Peddled." One voter was convinced that the day after the election she would be driving a Cadillac. Now, let's talk about Detroit who has a black population of about 80% in 2021. The property taxes are some of the highest in the state with 69.6 mills. The City of Troy is 36.8 mills! So it costs twice as much to live in the City of Detroit. Copied from a 2021 report: "Council President Pro-Tem Mary Sheffield has observed that Detroit’s millage rate is a
hindrance to growth, home ownership, population retention and wealth generation for most
Detroiters. Detroit’s property tax millage rate is also more than twice the State average and puts
Detroit at a competitive disadvantage for retaining and attracting residents and competing for
new businesses."

The essays on the trial of Ruby McCollum were also very interesting, and I wasn't informed about this part of US history. Which made this book all the more compelling. The author makes a great point that "friends" of Ruby were extremely quick to turn on her.

Zora Neale Hurston’s You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays was honored as The Englewood Review of Books’s starred new book release for the week of January 17, 2022!

Incredible. Read this one slowly and intentionally with the magnificent introduction of Dr Gates and Ms West to provide context and synthesis. This is an extraordinary collection of Zora Neale Hurston’s work and an important read for all. I’m so grateful I was given an advanced copy. I’ll treasure it and loan it to others.

I was delighted to receive an eARC via NetGalley for this collection. It is written in Hurston's very unique style and really makes you think about and rethink the topics it confronts. The writing is not new, but I had not read any of these works previously and they are brought together in a beautiful way. The introduction from Henry Louis Gates Jr. is also an important touch and does a great job of setting the stage for the writing that follows. I would definitely recommend this to others as an important body of work.