“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.” Zora Neale Hurston
Author, folklorist, and anthropologist, Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), influenced my manuscript, Song of Jaybird. Hurston’s novels depict the natural and fluent dialect of southern speech whether in the black or white community . She portrayed her characters with personal problems as individuals, and her concerns were not about “race.”
The first book I read was Seraph of the Suwanee (1948). At that time, Hurston crossed barriers of a Black author writing about a “white cracker” couple, Arvay and Jim, and demonstrates her belief people are people with individuality regardless of skin color.
I also read and studied Their Eyes Are Watching God (1937) and Mules and Men (1935) to understand my characters, colloquies, and card playing in a turpentine camp.
In 1938-39, Hurston was hired by the Federal Writers Project as an interviewer in lumber and turpentine camps, along with Stetson Kennedy. Their work was valuable in documenting the conditions of the camps and the dreadful “camp laws” existing in some of them.
Considering the time frame in which Hurston lived, it is remarkable to me she was allowed into the camp to interview. In her esssay, "Turpentine Camp – Cross City", Hurston rode on horseback with Black woods rider, John McFarlin. Her documentation of turpentine laborers has become a respected and viable resource on turpentine history.
“Taint like sawmills Turpentine woods is kind of lonesome. Use to be good at making up songs, but they don’t do that now.” John McFarlin 1938 "Turpentine Camp – Cross City" p.16 From: Stetson Kennedy Florida Folklife Collection, 1935-1991
My historical fiction, Song of Jaybird, takes place between 1897-1907. Hurston’s work and the folk life collection at Valdosta State University, represented turpentine thirty to fifty years later. The use of the automobile and other “modern” conveniences in the camps had changed, yet there were common threads of turpentine life which remained the same.
Valerie Boyd’s biography Wrapped in a Rainbow: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston (Scribner-2004) brought Zora to life for me. My love for Zora and her work deepened, as I learned of kindred interests with someone I admire. For example, Zora and I share a passion for gardening, long for simplicity, and seek solitude to create.
After reading Valerie Boyd's book, I wanted to write her a letter but sadly learned she passed away in 2022 from a battle with pancreatic cancer.
Wrapped in a Rainbow, Boyd documented Hurston’s work as an anthropologist on the practice of African Hoo Doo. She wrote this example, “If a man was murdered, for example, a hoodoo doctor might counsel his loved one to bury him with his hat on so the murderer would be brought to justice.” (p. 177) This sentence jumped of the page for me.
In Song of Jaybird, Delia prepares Sam’s body for burial; I had no prior knowledge of this belief when I wrote: Delia and Eva tenderly washed and dried his wounds, gently removing resin glued from his callused hands and enlarged knuckles with a moistened turpentine rag. Then Delia replaced Sam’s felt hat on his head, left coins in his pocket, and whispered…
It is true writers’ characters become so real, while writing Song of Jaybird, I dreamt laborers of Etna told me their stories. I listened and gave them a voice.
Photo Credit: Zora Neale Hurston, Negro novelist and anthropologist of New York City and Florida. [Between 1935 and 1943?] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2004672085/>
Ufdc.ufl.edu/collections/znhurs
https://www.floridamemory.com/learn/classroom/learning-units/zora-neale-hurston/documents/essay/
