Mules and Men audiobook

First off, I didn't read this book but listened to it on an audiobook version. This is a collection of black American folk lore. It is a a group of oral stories that were passed on to and written down by author Zora Neale Hurston (known for Their Eyes Were Watching God). Some of these stories were told back in the days of slavery and ones that Zora heard as a child. This was a project that Ms Hurston started back in the 1930s when she had returned to her hometown of Eatonville, Florida.What a wonderful time I had listening to these imaginative stories told by the talented Ruby Dee. I felt like I was a little kid again, sitting on the floor, listening to a storyteller weaving some fantastical tales laced with humor, wisdom and culture. This is definitely one "book" that should be listened to and not just read. I can't say enough about Ruby Dee's reading of these stories. A true treasure that hasn't gotten enough attention.

This book is an invaluable gift to the Black Diaspora, most especially those from North America.Bless her, what a treasure and gift was Zora Neale Hurston

Hurston's Mules And MenI read Zora Neale Hurston's novel "Their Eyes are Watching God" and wanted to read more. Hurston (1891 -- 1960) had studied anthropology at Barnard with one of the founders of modern anthropology, Franz Boas. With Boas' encouragement and funding from a private source, Hurston travelled South to collect African-American folklore. Her first stop was Eatonville, Florida, an all-black community where Hurston had spent much of her childhood. She then went South to Polk County, Florida and its sawmills and the Everglades. She went further South to Pierce and Lakeland gathering folk materials before heading to New Orleans to study Hoodoo. In 1927, she rented a small house in Eau Gallie, near Melbourne, Florida where she organized her extensive notes. Her book, "Mules and Men" was published in 1935."Mules and Men" is an outstanding source of information about the folk-tales, called "lies", of rural Southern African-Americans. (Florida was a gathering place for African-Americans throughout the South because of the economic opportunities it offered.) She visited old friends in Eatonville, and won the confidence of people in the other communities she visited. The tales include animal stories ("why dogs and cats are enemies", "how the snake got poison," for example) stories of pre-civil war days involving a slave named "Jack" and his master, stories of the battle between the sexes, contests between "Jack" and the devil, bragging contests, and much else. Hurston also collected songs and lyrics, including "John Henry", sermons, and hoodoo formulas while in New Orleans.But this book is much more than a compilation of folk materials. Hurston brings her material to life by bringing the story-tellers and the communities she visited to life. She writes with deep and obvious affection for the rural African-American communities of the South in the mid-1920s. Hurston's folk-tales are embedded in a fascinating story of their own as she introduces the reader to the small towns, the parties, the sawmills, the jooks, and the life of her story tellers. One of the characters that Hurston befriends is a woman named Big Sweet who lives with a man named Joe. Joe cheats on Big Sweet, and Big Sweet puts Joe right in no uncertain terms. Big Sweet and her enemy, a woman named Lucy, draw knives with potentially fatal consequences in a fight in a jook that involves Zora. Big Sweet is a strong and convincingly drawn character in her own right. The characters and communities in the book were for me even more convincing that the stories.The first part of Mules and Men describes Hurston's collecting of folk tales, while the second, shorter part discusses her experiences with Hoodoo doctors in New Orleans. Hoodoo played a large role in the lives of some African-Americans. I was reminded of Memphis Minnie's blues song "Hoodoo Lady" and of Muddy Waters' "I got my mojo working". The founder of Hoodoo was a woman named Marie Leveau. Hurston describes how she gained the confidence of several Hoodoo doctors in New Orleans, received initiation from them, and was in one case asked to stay on as a successor practitioner. Hurston relays Hoodoo spells used to kill an enemy, to make an unwanted person leave town, to get a lover or to get rid of an unwanted lover, and to bring help to those in jail. She recounts the stories of these conjures, of the Hoodoo doctors, and their clients with a great deal of seriousness. I found this section of the book fascinating but troubling and different from the folk-tales and people discussed in the first part of the book.The book is written almost entirely in dialect, but I found it easy to follow as the book progressed. Hurston wrote this book to preserve an important part of African-American culture in the United States and to express her commitment to and love for this culture. She believed this culture had its own strengths and could develop its own course and destiny internally. This is a fascinating, moving book and a thought-provoking picture of one form of the African-American experience in the United States.Robin Friedman

The brother in black puts a laugh in every vacant place in his mind. His laugh has a hundred meanings. It may mean amusement, anger, grief, bewilderment, chagrin, curiosity, simple pleasure or any other of the known or undefined emotions. (p. 62)Mules and Men is a collection of black stories and hoodoo (voodoo), published by Zora Neale Hurston in 1935. To collect such stories, you don't just Google your question; you need to listen carefully. You need to become an accepted member of the group.[But,] folklore is not as easy to collect as it sounds. The best source is where there are the least outside influences and these people, being usually under-privileged, are the shyest. They are most reluctant at times to reveal that which the soul lives by. And the Negro, in spite of his open-faced laughter, his seeming acquiescence, is particularly evasive. You see we are a polite people and we do not say to our questioner, “Get out of here!” We smile and tell him or her something that satisfies the white person because, knowing so little about us, he doesn’t know what he is missing. (p. 2) But just because she was black doesn't that gathering these stories was a piece of cake. Hurston initially betrayed herself as an outsider because she had worn a $12.74 dress from Macy's rather than the $1.98 mail-order dresses, bungalow aprons, and paper bags that the other women wore.Changing how she dressed, how she talked, how she presented herself helped people talk to her, but how does being a participant observer change what is observed? Are these the stories they would have told if she wasn't there?There is a playfulness to Hurston's stories, which belies their seriousness. One person tells a story and another ups the ante. I think of how a people gets around the oppression in their lives. They make and hang quilts to signal safety (or danger); they use language – vocabulary, word play, stories and story telling – to comfort, to reframe the current reality, to present alternate realities. While the Blacks in these stories are wise and canny and foolish, the Whites are mostly foolish. From one story:So John knelt down. “O Lord, here Ah am at de foot of de persimmon tree. If you’re gointer destroy Old Massa tonight, with his wife and chillun and everything he got, lemme see it lightnin’.” Jack up the tree, struck a match. Ole Massa caught hold of John and said: “John, don’t pray no more.” John said: “Oh yes, turn me loose so Ah can pray. O Lord, here Ah am tonight callin’ on Thee and Thee alone. If you are gointer destroy Ole Massa tonight, his wife and chillun and all he got, Ah want to see it lightnin’ again.” Jack struck another match and Ole Massa started to run. He give John his freedom and a heap of land and stock. He run so fast that it took a express train running at the rate of ninety miles an hour and six months to bring him back, and that’s how come niggers got they freedom today. (pp. 83-84). Hurston offers little analysis to these stories, as that would steal the life from them. Mules and Men is self-serve meaning-making."They all got a hidden meanin’, jus’ like de Bible. Everybody can’t understand what they mean. Most people is thin-brained. They’s born wid they feet under de moon. Some folks is born wid they feet on de sun and they kin seek out de inside meanin’ of words.” (p. 125)

4.0 Stars. Since this was an abridge version of the book, which I didn't know that I had, I wasn't sure if i would have liked it. There was one tale, or "lie" as it is said to be in the book that I felt was cut off, maybe it was just bad editing. But other than that, this was a pleasure to listen to. It is told from Zora's POV and recalls tales, or lies as they are called, that she has heard from her childhood told by the people of her hometown. I think some of them are ridiculous, like the one about how black folks became black, SPOILER >> it was all a misunderstanding lol. I enjoyed this. It was a quick listen, about 3 hours.

I completely loved the book. There is something really beautiful about knowing that she went out and collected these book of lies that have out lived her and will hopefully outlive us. This is what makes life beautiful. Reading stories from all walks of life and different perspectives. I truly enjoyed this book. So true and very refreshing. I totally can't wait to re-read "Their eyes were watching God".

The writing itself was great, but the most amazing bit was how her style conveyed both love and respect for tradition, black history and floklore.

I need to go back and re-read Their Eyes Were Watching God. It has been quite a few years since I read that and I remember the feelings I felt while reading better than actual details. In any case, this is a bit of a different novel-it's closer to nonfiction with a focal point being the lies or tall tales of the African communities from Florida to New Orleans in the 1930s. Zora was a bit of an outsider even though she was born in the South and was an African American woman because she was educated more than many of those she spoke to, who had greater experiences in hard labor, and she was being funded for her research which afforded her better clothing and resources than perhaps many she met along the way. She actually becomes quite aware of this at one point, scolding herself for wearing a much nicer dress to a dance than anyone in attendance. At first, one can tell the communities are cautious of her and suspicious. They also think that because she's rich she won't fit in to their circle.But Zora seems to have a huge mission to capture the folk tales and tall tales that these men (mostly men) have to offer as they try their best to outdo one another in their lying contests. They explain everything Biblical to animal and tell stories of how the slave in past times outsmarted his master. They explain relationships between man and woman, man and the devil, man and God, and the way the world is to them. It's sometimes fascinating, and at other times quite amusing to hear how the woodpecker got his funny head, for instance. The men are creative and entertaining and Zora sucks it all in to try to document it. It's important to document the community at this time and how they pass down these stories amongst themselves. It's almost like just as an important past time as a dance or African gambling games to get them through their days and they relish in being able to tell the stories. There is also quite a bit about songs that were popularly sung. Though the men seem rather sexist, their personalities are depicted very vividly and, perhaps because Zora uses their dialect in print and writes out words as they would have said them, they are easy to picture with characters almost too big for the page.What really threw me off reading this book was actually the hoodoo accounts of ways in which Zora joined and became a part of this community to learn about the ways of black magic in killing someone, banishing someone from your house, making someone go through extreme pain, making someone love you more, and making a whole court case go your favor. Zora tells accounts of gathering materials and following through on the wishes of the community who want all of these things to take place and gather up the funds to help see their desires to fruition. Zora shares a sort of closure to most of these cases that the person really did die or that the hoodoo actually worked and, though this whole section seemed so dark and bizarre to me, I found myself wondering if perhaps there was some actual truth to Hoodoo's effectiveness, which surprised me in and of itself. And, the very thought that Zora made these specific concoctions published for everyone also gives me the heebie jeebies...just in case you were wondering about how to banish a loved one or something like that. Hopefully, you weren't.So this work is important as a historical document and it is an interesting one as well. I'm glad it exists and am sad poor Zora suffered in her later life and it didn't seem like she was nearly as appreciated for being both a great writer as well as a female writer and an African American female writer as she should have been while she was alive. Hopefully, her spirit is happy now.