Alice Walker’s The Search for Zora

1. Alice Walker’sThe Search for Zora A Review From Group 3 Elizabeth Cimarrusti and Kathy Piorkowski

2. In an NIU English Class “Gender & the Novel”in Cyberspace, far, far, away Group 3 analyzed the Chapter “Looking for Zora”in the book In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardensby Alice Walker

3. Fable*of Contents • Walker’s Thesis • Main Points Supporting the thesis • Walker’s Insights • New Light on old ideas • Our Thoughts… *fable (fa bel) n. v. (3) a tale about a supernatural or extraordinary person or legend. (4) an untruth or falsehood. (8) to write or tell fables. (Random House Dictionary).

4. Walker's Thesis

5. Walker’s Thesis “We have written to each other for several weeks, swapping our latest finds (mostly hers) on Zora, and trying to make sense out of the mass of information obtained (often erroneous or simply confusing) from Zora herself—through her stories and autobiography—and from people who wrote about her.” Alice Walker, a black author, Writing in her journal About her journey with her white friend charlotte hunt to Florida in search of zora neale hurston’s grave.

6. Zora Neale Hurston

7. Main Points Supporting the Thesis

8. Points – Zora’s Life & Death Her Life • Zora Neale Hurston was an African-American collector of folklore and novelist who attempted to document the “true” life of her community, their language, their daily lives. • Author of Their Eyes Were Watching God. For subject material she used her hometown of Eatonville, Florida, the setting, the real people, and their daily lives, as subjects, some whose identities she changed, other characters she used their real names. • She wrote about what she knew, even taking a job as a maid to write a news article on the subject. She wrote the horoscope column in the Chronicle (Dr. Benton). • Politically, she was against integration to the dismay of activist Roy Wilkins (of NAACP fame). • Robert Hemenway describes Zora as a Barnard graduate and the “most important collector of Afro-American folklore in America” (page 96).

9. Points …continued Her Life • Described as an erect, unpretentious, humorous storyteller, who spoke beautiful English, (not the language she used in her stories, please! Per Dr. Benton). Well-read, well-traveled, She was a large (depending on her age) woman who loved to eat ice cream and talk (Langston Hughes and Dr. Benton). • So committed to her work that her only marriage was very short (a few months). • A prolific writer ……among them: • Their Eyes Were Watching God • Dust Tracks on a Road

10. Literary Works

11. Points …continued Her Lifecontinued • Her eventual bitterness over the “rejection of her folklore’s value, especially in the black community, frustrated by what she felt was her failure to convert the African-American world view into the forms of prose fiction, Hurston finally gave up.” (Robert Hemenway, p. 106) • Her last book was handwritten, on the Life of Herod, while living in a county welfare home, and penniless, she wrote to a publisher and asked him to consider her new book (publishers no longer sought her out, she had to go to them). (Robert Hemenway, page 96) .

12. Points – Zora’s Death Her Death • Zora died on January 16, 1959, after a stroke, in a County Welfare home, penniless, and was buried in an unmarked grave in a white cemetery in southern Florida. • Writer Alice Walker felt empathy for Zora as a sister African-American author and wanted to find the grave and mark it to show the world who Zora was. • The searchers conduct in-person interviews with Mathilda Moseley of Eatonville (and a character in Their Eyes Were Watching God); Dr. Benton, who cared for Zora in her final days; and local townsfolk of Eatonville and Ft. Pierce, Zora’s last home. • After finding the cemetery where Zora was purported to be buried, they select the most-likely grave and buy a marker. • Alice Walker finally feels at peace with herself and for Zora, both African-American women writers who strive for their art and their people.

13. Alice Walker's Search

14. Alice Walker’s Search • Walker feels personally close to Zora Neale Hurston, both as a writer and as her never-adopted, illegitimate niece. • Hurston’s grave was neither found nor marked as should be done for such a “majestic” writer. • Walker questions why Zora’s own African-American family, friends, and communities seemingly deserted her • Who reads her folktales, novels, autobiography? • Where was she buried? • Why no grave marker? • In her final days how she die and not be remembered? • Who remembers Zora in the black community she worked so hard to perpetuate in her writings? And why do they say “it was so long ago” and forget her? • Is this a family feud? Or an African-American community feud?

15. Alice’s Search Eatonville • Interview with City Hall Clerk – she refers the researchers to Mrs. Mathilda Moseley, “the woman who tells those ‘woman-is-smarter-than-man’ lies in Zora’s book” • Interview with 82 year old Mrs. Mathilda Moseley – • She’s suspicious of Walker: “Yes, I knew Zora Neale, … but that was a long time ago, and I don’t want to talk about it.” • “Zora Neale left here to go to school and she never really came back to live. She’d come here for material for her books, but that was all. She spent most of her time down in South Florida.”

16. Alice’s Search Ft. Pierce • Interview with Funeral Home Director: Zora’s grave is the only one in a circular area on the 17th Street in “The Garden of Heavenly Rest Cemetery”. • Alice searches through weeds and her feet become covered with sand and ants, scared all the time about slithers in the grass and poisonous snakes. • Unable to find the grave in the only “circular” area, she starts calling to Zora.

17. Zor-aa! Where are you? Alice Walker

18. Alice’s Search • Ft. Pierce • She spots a very large black bug near a scrubby tree…. • Her foot sinks into the grass and there IS AN UNMARKED GRAVE! • It must be, it has to be (it’s the only one) Zora’s final resting place! • Alice and Charlotte buy the monument for the “grave”.

19. Zora Neale Hurston “A Genius of the South” Novelist Folklorist Anthropologist 1901 1960 Zora’s Final Resting Place

20. “New Light” Alice Walker’s “Looking for Zora” • Their Eyes Were Watching God • Eatonville • Did her community Love or Hate Zora? • Who Reads Zora’s literature now?

21. Their Eyes Were Watching God • Perfect English, Zora didn’t speak in the “black vernacular” her characters used (Interview with Dr. Benton, pg. 111). • Eatonville, Janie’s hometown was also a real town in Florida which is a segregated, all-black community. • Zora writes about her hometown according Charlotte’s research. • Mathilda Moseley of TEWWG is also a real, live woman, 82 years old when Alice interviews her. She loves to tell stories of herself. “Zora wasn’t buried here…I don’t think anybody really knew where she was,” says Mathilda. .

22. Eatonville

23. Eatonville • Birthplace of Zora Neale. • Mathilda Moseley (is) a lifelong resident, “I’ve been everything but mayor and ..assistant mayor. Eatonville was and is an all-black town. … own police department, post office and town hall. School and good teachers • Joe Clarke (first mayor of the real Eatonville) was Mathilda’s uncle. Clarke’s fictional counterpart is Jody Starks, of TEWWG • Joe Clarke’s store (aka Jody Starks of TEWEG) was replaced by Club Eaton, a long orange-beige nightspot on the main road. apparently famous for the good times in it regularly had by all…modern equivalent of the store porch where all the men of Zora’s childhood came to tell “lies,” that is, black folk tales, that were “made and used on the spot,” to take a line from Zora.

24. Did her community Love or Hate Zora? • Love? • “What does it matter what white folks thought?” (student) • Ft. Pierce residents Benton and an elderly neighbor “we all loved Zora” • Noted writers Langston Hughes, Robert Hemenway, and Alice Walker extol her life and work, especially her folklore. • Hate? • Old-time Eatonville resident Moseley didn’t want to talk about Zora. • Charlotte said the church folk of Eatonville thought “Zora was pretty loose…and they didn’t appreciate her writing about them.” • NAACP’s Roy Wilkins blasted Zora for her anti-integration stance

25. Who Reads Zora’s literature now? WE DO!

26. Our Thoughts..... Elizabeth & Kathy

27. Elizabeth I preferred the thesis we give in this presentation because of the abstractness of Alice Walker’s words. Look at the hidden meanings inside the thesis, and not each individual word. When I look at that statement, I see it as imagery … saying that she is lost as a whole and maybe if they can find bits and pieces of her they can find out who she really is as a person. The Metaphor of searching for her grave is searching for her life, as her family disowned her, and her family and community would not tell her story, so everyone else must search for it. Kathy I preferred a thesis closer to Alice’s words: “when pain is no longer a direct threat to existence … greater disciplines are born.” It comes much closer to answering my own question “Who lost Zora and why?” Old-time Eatonville residents were threatened by and unhappy with her; her grave was never marked by family and friends; and even the NAACP’s Wilkins was upset with her. I think we got caught in Robert’s “trap” between the idea and the action. Our trap was the “journey” and “the reason for the journey”. For the good of the Group, I gave in. Especially since I also wanted to use the journey thesis in the first place! It was only later on second guessing myself, I changed my mind. What do you all think? Our Thoughts on the Thesis…The Walker essay was difficult and confusing to try to pull a thesis from, and we settled on the subject of the journey

28. The End

29. References • Hurston, Zora N. Their eyes were watching God. HarperCollins, 1998. • Roberts, Edgar V. Writing About Literature. Upper Saddle River, NJ:Pearson Hall, 2006. • Stein, J. ed. The Random House Dictionary of the English Language. Random House, 1966. • Walker, Alice. “Looking for Zora.” In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983.