"So far as my feelings are concerned, Peggy...has nothing on my. The cosmic Zora emerges. I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads." (183)
I was first introduced to Zora Neale Hurston, through a lover who gifted me Their Eyes Were Watching God. Books remain one of my most cherished gifts to receive, but this one in particular, was amazing.
In that novel, Zora had me rereading her words multiple times in order to fully grasp the nuances of her structures.
In this short story, I read the final paragraph multiple times.
Yet again, a Black female author has put words to long held feelings of mine.
Her acknowledgment and understanding that she is a Black woman being treated as such, but the simultaneous insistence that that treatment is beneath her desired comprehension.
Yes, it's happening.
But so much beauty is as well.
"There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes" (181)
Zora Neale Hurtson's Words I Loved...
"...got just as much pleasure out of the tourists as the tourists got out of the village" (180)
"I belonged to them... everybody's Zora" (181)
"I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world - I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife." (181)
"No one on earth ever had a greater chance for glory. The world to be won and nothing to be lost." (182)
"When covered by the waters, I am; and the ebb but reveals me again." (182)
"Music. The great blobs of purple and red emotion have not touched him. He has only heard why I felt." (181)
"I feel like a brown bag of miscellany ... pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of small things priceless and worthless." (184)
"A bit of colored glass more or less would not matter. Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place - who knows?" (184)
• December 23, 2022 | Barbados •