The Dancer's Dance: Mules and Men a hyper text

Currently, online treatments of Zora Neale Hurston's work mimic the canon's early dismissal of her. Although a few well constructed sites devoted to Hurston herself exist, as of now no critical account of her work appears. In keeping with the tradition of Hemenway and Walker's rediscovery of Hurston, this site hopes to begin to fill this vacuum by providing an e-text of Mules and Men, arguably Hurston's most important contribution to African American culture. Documenting the folktales and hoodoo practices of southern blacks in the 1930's Hurston captures a culture that overcomes the adversity of poverty, racism,and sexism by, in her words "hitting a straight lick wid a crooked stick" (Mules and Men). Mules and Men is still a complex and controversial text today because, as Barbara Johnson states, it "is a book with multiple frames"(Johnson p. 66). Any reading of the text must therefore account for these various frames. This site hopes to do so by providing an account of a few of the innumerable ways in which Mules and Men may be read. More than merely providing the e-text of Mules and Men, this site documents the world recorded by Zora Neale Hurston through augmenting the text with elements unavailable to the medium of the original work. Visitors will find both Hurston's recordings of the folksongs that appear in the text and photographs documenting her folklore collecting trips.

Originally published on the XRoads site for the UVA American Studies program. Years range from 1995-2005. Content is captured at the level of functionality available on the date of capture.

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