You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays by Zora Neale Hurston, edited and with an introduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr and Genevieve West, is out now from Jonathan Ball Publishers.

‘One of the greatest writers of our time.’ – Toni Morrison

Spanning more than 35 years of work, the first comprehensive collection of essays, criticism and articles by the legendary author of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston, showcasing the evolution of her distinctive style as an author.

You Don’t Know Us Negroes is the quintessential gathering of provocative essays from one of the world’s most celebrated writers, Zora Neale Hurston.

Spanning more than three decades and penned during the backdrop of the birth of the Harlem Renaissance, Montgomery bus boycott, desegregation of the military, and school integration, Hurston’s writing articulates the beauty and authenticity of Black life as only she could.

Collectively, these essays showcase the roles enslavement and Jim Crow have played in intensifying Black people’s inner lives and culture rather than destroying it. Hurston argues that in the process of surviving, Black people reinterpreted every aspect of American culture – ‘modif[ying] the language, mode of food preparation, practice of medicine, and most certainly religion.’ White supremacy prevents the world from seeing or completely recognizing Black people in their full humanity and Hurston made it her job to lift the veil and reveal the heart and soul of the race.

These pages reflect Hurston as the controversial figure she was – someone who stated that feminism is a mirage and that the integration of schools did not necessarily improve the education of Black students. Also covered is the sensational trial of Ruby McCollum, a wealthy Black woman convicted in 1952 for killing her lover, a white doctor.

Demonstrating the breadth of this revered and influential writer’s work, You Don’t Know Us Negroes is an invaluable chronicle of a writer’s development and a window into her world and mind.

About the author

Zora Neale Hurston was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist. An author of four novels (Jonah’s Gourd Vine, 1934; Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937; Moses, Man of the Mountain, 1939; and Seraph on the Suwanee, 1948); two books of folklore (Mules and Men, 1935, and Tell My Horse, 1938); an autobiography (Dust Tracks on a Road, 1942); and over 50 short stories, essays, and plays. She attended Howard University, Barnard College and Columbia University, and was a graduate of Barnard College in 1927. She was born on January 7, 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama, and grew up in Eatonville, Florida. She died in Fort Pierce, in 1960. In 1973, Alice Walker had a headstone placed at her gravesite with this epitaph: ‘Zora Neale Hurston: A Genius of the South.’

Henry Louis Gates, Jr, is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. An award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, Professor Gates has authored or co-authored 22 books and created 18 documentary films, including Finding Your Roots. His six-part PBS documentary, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, earned an Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Program-Long Form, as well as a Peabody Award, Alfred I du Pont-Columbia University Award, and NAACP Image Award.

M Genevieve West is Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English, Speech, and Foreign Languages at Texas Woman’s University. A scholar of Zora Neale Hurston’s work, West has contributed to prestigious academic journals such as African American Review, Amerikastudien/American Studies, Receptions, and Women’s Studies. She is the author of one work of literary criticism, Zora Neale Hurston and American Literary Culture, and the editor of Hurston’s Harlem Renaissance short stories Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick.

Categories International Non-fiction

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