Customer Reviews

Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters

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You'll fall in love with Zora through the letters that she wrote from the early 20s until her death in 1960. A compelling and fascinating woman who didn't leave much unsaid. The letters still brim with vitality and energy and reflect the character of a woman way ahead of her time.

Zora Neale Hurston told her life story through the many novels and plays she wrote, but she also told it through the incredible volume of letters she wrote to friends and supporters as well as to her enemies and detractors. She was a prolific letter writer whose main theme was always on her public life of writing.

Through Kaplan's "A Life in Letters," Hurston reveals all the joys and frustrations, the highs and lows of a writing life. They also reveal her constant struggles, despite critical acclaim, to make ends meet.

But this woman loved to write and loved an audience. Her letters are inside proof of her amazing talent and joyful, triumphant will. They very clearly convey her belief that words and stories can transform people and shape events.

It's a complex and impressive book to read. Kaplan organizes the letters by decade and provides a personal and professional context for each chapter through scholarly introductions and extensive footnotes. Even some 50 years after her death, the tone and flavor in Hurston's letters are so charged and immediate you almost want to drop her a line. Who knows? This woman's spirit was so strong, she may even write back.

Kaplan's collection of Hurston's letters provides her fans with a first-hand intimate view into the mind of the author which has previously been restricted to the perview of scholars. For the first time, readers can draw their own conclusions about Hurston's often contradictory, enigmatic, and adventurous life.
The letters are logically organized in chronological order with a comprehensive and lively introduction to each decade. Kaplan's painstakingly thorough research, evidenced in her footnotes and glossary, help guide the reader's interpetation and understanding of events in a way that a biography cannot. For this reason, I have read Valerie Boyd's excellent biography in tandem with Kaplan's collection of Hurston's letters. I was also impressed with the "new" research in Kaplan's book that sheds light on some of Hurston's social and political stands, such as her involement in the first black doll to be produced in the U.S. In addition to the many new facts she presents, I also found Kaplan's editorial comments to be extremely enlightening and well-founded. I beleive that most fans who read this collection of letters will most likely feel the same way toward Kaplan as I do . . . deeply grateful for the gift of insight.

Kaplan has an excellent compilation here, but readers who bought her hard copy first edition and compared it with her second edition paperback will notice a complete rewrite of her commentary of the Ruby McCollum story. In the first edition, Kaplan states that "McCollum did not testify at her trial," and gives a rather superficial (and inaccurate) account of the Adams-McCollum connection. In the second edition, she correctly reports the trial and greatly improves her account of the story, with the exception of erring in Ruby McCollum's age by failing to do primary research and visit McCollum's grave to see the marker.

What Kaplan also fails to do is to mention my name, and the fact that my contact with her regarding my book, The Trial of Ruby McCollum (available on Amazon), included the complete transcript of the missing trial as well as other detailed research that she evidently either revisited with greater thoroughness, or discovered for the first time. She had promised an acknowledgment of my contribution to her work, but seems to have forgotten the promise. This makes me question her other research, and the proper crediting of sources.

I cannot argue that her book is otherwise a great contribution to Hurston scholarship, but I can set the record straight on how her work was improved by my contributions without even a footnote.