Research Catalog

Title

Zora and Langston : a story of friendship and betrayal / Yuval Taylor.

Author

Taylor, Yuval

Publication

New York : W.W. Norton & Company, [2019]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 302 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations; 25 cm

Summary

• "They were best friends. They were collaborators, literary gadflies, and champions of the common people. They were the leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance. Zora Neale Hurston, the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Langston Hughes, the author of 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers' and 'Let America Be America Again,' first met in 1925, at a great gathering of black and white literati, and they fascinated each other. They traveled together in Hurston's dilapidated car through the rural South collecting folklore, worked on the play Mule Bone, and wrote scores of loving letters. They even had the same patron: Charlotte Osgood Mason, a wealthy white woman who insisted on being called 'Godmother.' Paying them lavishly while trying to control their work, Mason may have been the spark for their bitter and passionate falling-out. Was the split inevitable when Hughes decided to be financially independent of his patron? Was Hurston jealous of the young woman employed as their typist? Or was the rupture over the authorship of Mule Bone? Yuval Taylor answers these questions while illuminating Hurston's and Hughes's lives, work, competitiveness, and ambition, uncovering little-known details. [This book] is the dramatic and moving story of one of the most influential friendships in literature."--Dust jacket.
• They were best friends, collaborators, and champions of the common people; the leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance. Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes first met in 1925, and traveled together in Hurston's dilapidated car through the rural South collecting folklore, worked on the play Mule Bone, and wrote scores of loving letters. Their patron, Charlotte Osgood Mason, was a wealthy white woman who paid them lavishly while trying to control their work. Taylor illuminates Hurston's and Hughes's lives, work, competitiveness, and ambition, uncovering little-known details while searching for the reasons behind their bitter and passionate falling-out. -- adapted from jacket

Subjects

• African American authors
• Black author
• 1900-1999
• African American women authors > 20th century > Biography
• Hurston, Zora Neale
• Biographies
• Friendship in literature
• Hughes, Langston, 1902-1967
• Biography
• African American authors > 20th century > Biography

Genre/Form

• Biography.
• Biographies.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction: Lovingly yours -- Spring 1925 : opportunity -- 1891/1924 : I laugh, and grow strong -- Summer 1926 : the Niggerati -- Spring 1927 : enter Godmother -- Summer 1927 : the company of good things -- Fall 1927 : a deep well of the spirit -- Winter 1928/winter 1930 : this is going to be big -- Spring 1930 : the bone of contention -- Winter 1931 : a miasma of untruth -- 1932/1960 : the aftermath -- Conclusion: The legacy.

Call Number

Sc E 19-832

ISBN

• 9780393243918
• 0393243915

LCCN

2018050513

OCLC

1037808120

Author

Taylor, Yuval, author.

Title

Zora and Langston : a story of friendship and betrayal / Yuval Taylor.

Publisher

New York : W.W. Norton & Company, [2019]

Edition

First edition.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Note

Schomburg copy with dust jacket.

Chronological Term

1900-1999

Local Subject

Black author.

Research Call Number

Sc E 19-832

JFE 21-5977