When the African American writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston explored the southern states in the 1930s, as well as including a pen and paper in her luggage, she packed a gun. The author, whose novels included the much admired Their Eyes Were Watching God, was spiky and fearless, often travelling in dangerous territory where a lone Black female reporter attracted unwelcome attention.
In recent years, new works by Hurston – work either previously unpublished or short stories collected together for the first time – have been eagerly anticipated. Books such as Barracoon (2018), Hitting a Straight Lick With a Crooked Stick (2020), and now You Don’t Know Us Negroes, a collection of nonfiction pieces, have meant that Hurston, who died in 1960, has now garnered more fans than when she was alive.
