Good Reads / Community Library Notes
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick
Zora Neale Hurston
Review by Priscilla Comen
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick
Zora Neale Hurston
Review by Priscilla Comen
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick, by Zora Neale Hurston, is a collection of short stories highlighting the lives of African-Americans in Harlem.
Her earliest work shows her wrestling with identity. The story “Our bit of our Harlem” asks what connects people. An unnamed narrator and a child sell candy. Although they overcome their class differences, most of the stories show a wedge that divides people.
In “The Back Room” Lilya Barkman stands looking at a large oil painting of herself and a man who stands beside her. He says, “You had the world in a jug.” She believes him. The reason she’s never married is because it ages a woman.
She cancels her date with Bob to concentrate on getting Bill to take her to the Bryons this night. Harlem’s upper class is there; fur wraps, sedans, fine gowns and tuxedoes. They dance the Charleston and the Black Bottom. Everyone is modern. Bob is urged to take Bill’s young niece to the cabaret as Dr. Cameron and Lilya go home. Bob is at the front door kissing the niece and saying he’ll buy her a ring at Tiffany’s tomorrow. The men all leave Lilya behind. This is the only story about the upper class of Harlem’s elite.
“Monkey Funk” is told in Biblical chapters with a most cynical look at relationships between men and women. She takes her proverbial “stick” to both genders and the outmatched husband becomes responsible for big alimony payments. The woman is the central character and she manipulates her performance.
Twenty-one stories appear here and in many we can see the growth of her writing skills. Most of them are written in dialect or idiom which makes them humorous. She wrote some of them between 1931 and 1933 before the use of the idiom was fully developed.
“Magnolia Flower” and “Sweat” are about violent tyrants who want to control the women in their lives. Magnolia Flower falls for an African-American teacher and her father vows to hang the lover. Bentley makes the lover watch Magnolia Flower marry one of his lackeys before the hanging. In “Sweat,” Sykes cheats and beats Delia for fifteen years. Delia builds a home for them and washes white people’s clothes. The men turn a blind eye to Syke’s violence and refuse to address his abuse. How much violence toward a wife is acceptable we are asked. Have the men in the community failed to act as men?
In “Drenched in Light,” author Hurston explores gender with Isis, the eleven-year-old heroine. She sits on the fence to watch the people and cars outside her home although this is “unladylike.” Iris wants to whistle and slouch and ride horseback to herd cattle and crack a whip, rather than wash her family’s dishes. Grandma yells at her in dialect and cuts switches. “Sit up upon ya backbone,” Grandma says and Isis sits straight up. The local lodge of the Order of Odd Fellows is having a march and a barbecue and music that Isis is drawn to. Because her dress is torn and dirty she rushes home to a trunk and clad in a new red tablecloth like a Spanish shawl, she dances like a gypsy. When a big car drives up, two white men and a lady get out. They ask directions to the Park Hotel in Maitland and offer Isis a ride home. When Grandma sees her ruined tablecloth, she’s furious. The elegant lady offers her five dollars to replace it and takes Isis to the hotel to “soak her sunshine into her soul.” “You’ve been adopted,” says the man to the fancy lady. This is one of the few happy endings in the book.
These stories feature Hurston’s keen ear for dialogue, her devotion to showing the people she knew, and the combination of race, class, and gender. Hurston is best known for her classic novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God”. Although they are “banned” books, they have endured for many years and are much loved. Find this collection on the new fiction shelf of your local library.
Her earliest work shows her wrestling with identity. The story “Our bit of our Harlem” asks what connects people. An unnamed narrator and a child sell candy. Although they overcome their class differences, most of the stories show a wedge that divides people.
In “The Back Room” Lilya Barkman stands looking at a large oil painting of herself and a man who stands beside her. He says, “You had the world in a jug.” She believes him. The reason she’s never married is because it ages a woman.
She cancels her date with Bob to concentrate on getting Bill to take her to the Bryons this night. Harlem’s upper class is there; fur wraps, sedans, fine gowns and tuxedoes. They dance the Charleston and the Black Bottom. Everyone is modern. Bob is urged to take Bill’s young niece to the cabaret as Dr. Cameron and Lilya go home. Bob is at the front door kissing the niece and saying he’ll buy her a ring at Tiffany’s tomorrow. The men all leave Lilya behind. This is the only story about the upper class of Harlem’s elite.
“Monkey Funk” is told in Biblical chapters with a most cynical look at relationships between men and women. She takes her proverbial “stick” to both genders and the outmatched husband becomes responsible for big alimony payments. The woman is the central character and she manipulates her performance.
Twenty-one stories appear here and in many we can see the growth of her writing skills. Most of them are written in dialect or idiom which makes them humorous. She wrote some of them between 1931 and 1933 before the use of the idiom was fully developed.
“Magnolia Flower” and “Sweat” are about violent tyrants who want to control the women in their lives. Magnolia Flower falls for an African-American teacher and her father vows to hang the lover. Bentley makes the lover watch Magnolia Flower marry one of his lackeys before the hanging. In “Sweat,” Sykes cheats and beats Delia for fifteen years. Delia builds a home for them and washes white people’s clothes. The men turn a blind eye to Syke’s violence and refuse to address his abuse. How much violence toward a wife is acceptable we are asked. Have the men in the community failed to act as men?
In “Drenched in Light,” author Hurston explores gender with Isis, the eleven-year-old heroine. She sits on the fence to watch the people and cars outside her home although this is “unladylike.” Iris wants to whistle and slouch and ride horseback to herd cattle and crack a whip, rather than wash her family’s dishes. Grandma yells at her in dialect and cuts switches. “Sit up upon ya backbone,” Grandma says and Isis sits straight up. The local lodge of the Order of Odd Fellows is having a march and a barbecue and music that Isis is drawn to. Because her dress is torn and dirty she rushes home to a trunk and clad in a new red tablecloth like a Spanish shawl, she dances like a gypsy. When a big car drives up, two white men and a lady get out. They ask directions to the Park Hotel in Maitland and offer Isis a ride home. When Grandma sees her ruined tablecloth, she’s furious. The elegant lady offers her five dollars to replace it and takes Isis to the hotel to “soak her sunshine into her soul.” “You’ve been adopted,” says the man to the fancy lady. This is one of the few happy endings in the book.
These stories feature Hurston’s keen ear for dialogue, her devotion to showing the people she knew, and the combination of race, class, and gender. Hurston is best known for her classic novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God”. Although they are “banned” books, they have endured for many years and are much loved. Find this collection on the new fiction shelf of your local library.