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Jonah's Gourd Vine
''Jonah's Gourd Vine'' is Zora Neale Hurston's 1934 debut novel. The novel is a semi-autobiographical novel following John Buddy Pearson and his wife, Lucy. The characters share the same first names as Hurston's parents and make a similar migration from Notasulga, Alabama to Hurston's childhood home, Eatonville, Florida. Hurston wrote the novel after publisher Bertram Lippencott read "The Gilded Six-Bits" and demonstrated interest. After its publication by J. B. Lippencott & Co, the novel received generally favorable reviews. The novel's title derives from , using the gourd vine from the passage as a metaphor for the main character of the novel, a philandering preacher. The novel displays the experiences of Black life in the post-Reconstruction era. Hurston explores themes including marital dysfunction, generational trauma, and testimony. Background Hurston first had the idea for ''Jonah's Gourd Vine'' while conducting research in New Orleans and the Bahamas on hoodoo prac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) was an American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-1900s American South and published research on Hoodoo (spirituality), hoodoo. The most popular of her four novels is ''Their Eyes Were Watching God'', published in 1937. She also wrote more than 50 short stories, plays, and essays. Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama, and moved with her family to Eatonville, Florida, in 1894. She later used Eatonville as the setting for many of her stories. In her early career, Hurston conducted anthropological and ethnographic research while a student at Barnard College and Columbia University. She had an interest in African-American and Caribbean folklore, and how these contributed to the community's identity. She also wrote fiction about contemporary issues in the Black community and became a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Her short satires, drawing from the African-America ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Folklore
Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, ranging from traditional building styles common to the group. Folklore also includes customary lore, taking actions for folk beliefs, the forms and rituals of celebrations such as Christmas and weddings, folk dances and initiation rites. Each one of these, either singly or in combination, is considered a folklore artifact or traditional cultural expression. Just as essential as the form, folklore also encompasses the transmission of these artifacts from one region to another or from one generation to the next. Folklore is not something one can typically gain in a formal school curriculum or study in the fine arts. Instead, these traditions are passed along informally from one individual to another either through verbal instruction or demonstr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels By Zora Neale Hurston
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the historica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
African-American Novels
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of enslaved Africans who are from the United States. While some Black immigrants or their children may also come to identify as African-American, the majority of first generation immigrants do not, preferring to identify with their nation of origin. African Americans constitute the second largest racial group in the U.S. after White Americans, as well as the third largest ethnic group after Hispanic and Latino Americans. Most African Americans are descendants of enslaved people within the boundaries of the present United States. On average, African Americans are of West/ Central African with some European descent; some also have Native American and other ancestry. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, African immigrants generally do not sel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1934 American Novels
Events January–February * January 1 – The International Telecommunication Union, a specialist agency of the League of Nations, is established. * January 15 – The 8.0 Nepal–Bihar earthquake strikes Nepal and Bihar with a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''), killing an estimated 6,000–10,700 people. * January 26 – A 10-year German–Polish declaration of non-aggression is signed by Nazi Germany and the Second Polish Republic. * January 30 ** In Nazi Germany, the political power of federal states such as Prussia is substantially abolished, by the "Law on the Reconstruction of the Reich" (''Gesetz über den Neuaufbau des Reiches''). ** Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States, signs the Gold Reserve Act: all gold held in the Federal Reserve is to be surrendered to the United States Department of the Treasury; immediately following, the President raises the statutory gold price from US$20.67 per ounce to $35. * February 6 – 6 February ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sharecropping
Sharecropping is a legal arrangement with regard to agricultural land in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on that land. Sharecropping has a long history and there are a wide range of different situations and types of agreements that have used a form of the system. Some are governed by tradition, and others by law. The Italian ''mezzadria'', the French ''métayage'', the Catalan '' masoveria'', the Castilian ''mediero'', the Slavic ''połowcy'' and ''izdolshchina'', and the Islamic system of ''muzara‘a'' (المزارعة), are examples of legal systems that have supported sharecropping. Overview Sharecropping has benefits and costs for both the owners and the tenant. Under a sharecropping system, the landowner provided a share of land to be worked by the sharecropper, and usually provided other necessities such as housing, tools, seed, or working animals. Local merchants usually provided food and other supplies ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plant City, Florida
Plant City is an incorporated city in Hillsborough County, Florida, Hillsborough County, Florida, United States, approximately midway between Brandon, Florida, Brandon and Lakeland, Florida, Lakeland along Interstate 4. The population was 39,764 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Despite many thinking it was named for flora grown at nursery (horticulture), plant nurseries (especially vegetables and fruits, as well as tropical houseplants) in its tropical Gulf Coast climate, it was named after prominent railroad developer Henry B. Plant (see Plant System). Plant City is known as the winter strawberry capital of the world and hosts the annual Florida Strawberry Festival in the late winter (usually in February or early March), which is attended by people from all over the United States as well as many people from around the world. History Plant City's original name given during the middle 1800s was ''Ichepuckesassa'' (also known as ''Idasukshed'') after the Indigenous peop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mules And Men
''Mules and Men'' is a 1935 autoethnographical collection of African-American folklore collected and written by anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. The book explores stories she collected in two trips: one in Eatonville and Polk County, Florida, and one in New Orleans. Hurston's decision to focus her research on Florida came from a desire to record the cross-section of black traditions in the state. In her introduction to ''Mules and Men'', she wrote, "Florida is a place that draws people—white people from all over the world, and Negroes from every Southern state surely and some from the North and West". Hurston documented 70 folktales during the Florida trip, while the New Orleans trip yielded a number of stories about Marie Laveau, voodoo and Hoodoo traditions. Many of the folktales are told in vernacular; recording the dialect and diction of the Black communities Hurston studied. The book embraces both her own re-immersion in the folklore of her childhood, and a desire to docu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hoodoo (spirituality)
Hoodoo is a set of spiritual practices, traditions, and beliefs created and concealed from slaveholders by Slavery in the United States, enslaved Africans in North America. Hoodoo evolved from various traditional African religions, practices, and in the Southeastern United States, American South incorporated with various elements of Native American ethnobotany, indigenous botanical knowledge. Hoodoo is an African Diaspora tradition created during the time of slavery in the United States and is an esoteric system of African-American occultism. Many of the practices are similar to other African Diaspora traditions as the practices come from the Bakongo people in Central Africa. Over the first century of the Atlantic slave trade, trans-Atlantic slave trade, an estimated 52% of all kidnapped Africans (over 900,000 people) came from Central African countries like Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo, Angola, Central African Republic and Gabon. By the end of the colonial ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semi-autobiographical Novel
An autobiographical novel is a form of novel using autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fictive elements. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction. Because an autobiographical novel is partially fiction, the author does not ask the reader to expect the text to fulfill the "autobiographical pact".Philippe Lejeune"Autobiographical Pact," pg. 19 Names and locations are often changed and events are recreated to make them more dramatic but the story still bears a close resemblance to that of the author's life. While the events of the author's life are recounted, there is no pretense of exact truth. Events may be exaggerated or altered for artistic or thematic purposes. Novels that portray settings and/or situations with which the author is familiar are not necessarily autobiographical. Neither are novels that include aspects drawn from the author's life as minor plot details. To be considere ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Bahamas
The Bahamas (), officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the West Indies in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic. It takes up 97% of the Lucayan Archipelago's land area and is home to 88% of the archipelago's population. The archipelagic state consists of more than 3,000 islands, cays, and islets in the Atlantic Ocean, and is located north of Cuba and northwest of the island of Hispaniola (split between the Dominican Republic and Haiti) and the Turks and Caicos Islands, southeast of the U.S. state of Florida, and east of the Florida Keys. The capital is Nassau, Bahamas, Nassau on the island of New Providence. The Royal Bahamas Defence Force describes The Bahamas' territory as encompassing of ocean space. The Bahama Islands were inhabited by the Lucayan people, Lucayans, a branch of the Arawakan-Taino language, speaking Taíno, for many centuries. Christopher Columbus was the first European to see the islands, making hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Orleans
New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans Merriam-Webster. ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nueva Orleans) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 according to the 2020 U.S. census, it is the List of municipalities in Louisiana, most populous city in Louisiana and the twelfth-most populous city in the southeastern United States. Serving as a List of ports in the United States, major port, New Orleans is considered an economic and commercial hub for the broader Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast region of the United States. New Orleans is world-renowned for its Music of New Orleans, distinctive music, Louisiana Creole cuisine, Creole cuisine, New Orleans English, uniq ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
