New Tracks on Dust Tracks: Toward a Reassessment of the Life of Zora Neale Hurston

Abstract

Zora Neale Hurston identified a central concern in the representational character of women's autobiography when she wrote, Now women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly (Their Eyes 9). Certainly Hurston demonstrates this point in her own account of her life, Dust on a Road. The veracity of Dust has long been suspect. Many of Hurston's most avid fans regret the book, voicing much the same opinion as did Alice Walker when she observed that, the first three chapters, it rings false (xvii). New biographical discoveries prove the extent to which this is true, and reveal to an even greater extent than previously suspected the autobiographical content of Jonah's Gourd Vine. These discoveries have been gleaned from several hitherto untapped sources--including a groundbreaking interview with Winifred Hurston Clark,(1) the oldest of Hurston's surviving nieces and nephews; information gleaned from the Family Record page of the Hurston family bible; and careful cross-referencing of leads with public documents such as census records, marriage licenses, and death certificates. This information not only deepens our awareness of Hurston's problematic life, but makes possible a more penetrating understanding of her writing, revealing to an even greater extent than previously suspected the autobiographical content of Hurston's 1934 novel Jonah's Gourd Vine. This article is divided into three sections. Section one discusses the sources of these new tracks on Dust Tracks. Section two highlights the biographical information that the Family Record page offers, and considers that information in the context of Hurston's assertions in Dust and in the context of her 1934 novel Jonah's Gourd Vine, while section three suggests avenues of exploration for new tracks on Dust Tracks and points out some race and gender issues that affect the veracity of Hurston's autobiography. Much of this information derives directly from an interview I conducted with Winifred Hurston Clark, the daughter of Zora's eldest brother, Hezekiah Robert. Born in 1920, Mrs. Clark is the eldest of Hurston's eight surviving nieces and nephews, and the only one of them who lived with her. Not only does Mrs. Clark provide testimony critical to a deeper understanding of Zora Neale Hurston's life, but she possesses a key document: the Hurston family bible. The bible is a vital, previously unknown document that verifies much of the missing biographical data about Zora Neale Hurston and the Hurston family that has so long eluded scholars. The Family Record page of the bible, aged, brown, and brittle, reveals in legible brown ink and stylized, turn-of-the-century penmanship vital statistics--names, birth years, birth places, and death dates of Zora Neale Hurston's grandparents, parents, and siblings, as well as the siblings of Hezekiah Robert (Bob) Hurston, Zora's eldest brother (see Fig. 1). [Figure 1 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A series of events which bear careful retelling explains how the bible came into Mrs. Clark's possession. They answer the central question, Why has the bible has been lost for so long? According to Mrs. Clark, her father, who had established a thriving medical practice in Memphis, moved his father, John Hurston, and stepmother, Mattie Moge Hurston, to Memphis sometime after the Reverend Hurston's tenure as Mayor of Eatonville ended in 1916 (Otey 16-17). The year was most likely 1917. Mrs. Clark does not know why Bob moved his father, but one can speculate that the Reverend Hurston's health may have been failing. Mrs. Clark reports that John Hurston was killed in Memphis in a fatal train-automobile collision in May 1918. Following her husband's death, Mattie Hurston, who had no children of her own, continued living in Memphis, and remained close to Bob Hurston and his children. …