Novels and stories

Hurston flowered under the warming sun of the Harlem Renaissance, the black arts' explosion centered in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s. After years of neglect, she died a forgotten figure, but her reputation blossomed anew in the late 1970s. Hurston's permanent place in the canon of U.S. literature is now assured, for her second novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), is considered a classic and is taught in the college classroom. The estimable Library of America series draws together between the covers of one volume all four of her novels and a goodly selection of her short stories. That she was mother to the likes of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison is tangible. It's obvious they learned from Hurston's use of black folklore as the mat{{‚}}eriel of her fiction and admire her richly soaring language, which is derived from black dialect. Her novels and stories--the latter a form she didn't use as effectively--relate the loves and woes of black and white people from in and around the southern communities she knew so well; one novel, Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939), has a biblical setting, and it's still an enrapturing interpretation of a story told many times before. Libraries without a complete set of Hurston's fiction will find this volume a necessary and easy purchase to fill that unfortunate gap. (Reviewed January 1, 1995)0940450836Brad Hooper

This two-volume set brings together for the first time all of Hurston's best works: four novels, two books of folklore, and the first complete edition of her famous autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.