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Zora Neale Hurston: The Breath of Her Voice

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Just when it seems that every possible scholastic measure has been exercised to determine the depth and breadth of Zora Neale Hurston's wit, her exceptional imagination and intense preoccupation with the varied nuances of African American culture, there comes along a new stroke of genius that provides an end of the 20th century punctuation mark on the more than half a century of Zora phobia. The newest of these is Ayana Karanja's handiwork Zora Neale Hurston the Breath of Her Voice (Peter Lang Publishers). It is an absolutely captivating and engaging meditation on the life of a legend whom we have all come to love as Zora. The book comprises an interesting admixture of scholastic and literary forms and probings, including direct and indirect narratives and poetry. It beckons Zora's presence to its pages. This work is not a recycling of previous literary efforts on Hurston nor does it bear much of the jargon that we have come to expect from current and past research on this Harlem Renaissance figure.

Karanja exhibits a strong connection with Hurston's spirit as translated through the now legendary pages of her works. In this regard Karanja suggests:

"Hurston pushed the boundaries of ethnographic writing in a fashion similar to ethnographers who are now referred to as postmodernist anthropologists (those who challenge conventional forms of ethnographic writing and who demonstrate unconventional discursive practices)."