Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folk-Tales from the Gulf States

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If you're a fan of Zora Neale Hurston, you've been waiting a long time: This is first book by the great African-American author to appear in more than 50 years! Compiled in the late '20s, Every Tongue Got to Confess is Hurston's collection of nearly 500 folktales from the rural black South. As Hurston devotees know, the Alabama-born author regarded folklore as her first love, and it was always an integral element of her creativity.

Janet Maslin

In compiling Every Tongue Got to Confess Hurston clearly placed as much emphasis on imagination as on authenticity. She gives these stories a sharp immediacy and a fine supply of down-to-earth humor.
— New York Times

Julius Lester

In Every Tongue Got to Confess, the book's great value for us today is in the way it returns us to Hurston's literary and academic roots as a folklorist and anthropologist and to the people and material which inspired and enriched her fiction.
— Los Angeles Times

From The Critics

In 1927, the aspiring anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston set out from New York for the Deep South, hoping to amass a collection of the African-American folklore she had loved since her childhood. Armed with a scholarly grant and her academic training, Hurston bought herself a car and a pistol and headed off for sawmills, turpentine camps and juke joints where black vernacular culture prospered. The experience was pivotal in Hurston's career, reintroducing her to the Southern folk who would be at the center of her fiction and reminding her of the vitality of their culture. She had feared that "Negroness" was disappearing beneath urban society; the journey showed her that it was alive and well and "still in the making." Unfortunately, most of the material Hurston collected was never published, and what did reach the public had often been reworked to meet the demands of publishers and patrons. So it was a lucky event when the manuscript of this collection was recently discovered moldering in the Library of Congress. Published here for the first time, these folktales of the black South appear as Hurston wanted them seen: as unadorned testaments to the suffering and the vibrant, creative humor of her people.
—Sean McCann

Publishers Weekly

Although Hurston is better known for her novels, particularly Their Eyes Were Watching God, she might have been prouder of her anthropological field work. In 1927, with the support of Franz Boas, the dean of American anthropologists, Hurston traveled the Deep South collecting stories from black laborers, farmers, craftsmen and idlers. These tales featured a cast of characters made famous in Joel Chandler Harris's bowdlerized Uncle Remus versions, including John (related, no doubt, to High John the Conqueror), Brer Fox and various slaves. But for Hurston these stories were more than entertainments; they represented a utopia created to offset the sometimes unbearable pressures of disenfranchisement: "Brer Fox, Brer Deer, Brer 'Gator, Brer Dawg, Brer Rabbit, Ole Massa and his wife were walking the earth like natural men way back in the days when God himself was on the ground and men could talk with him." Hurston's notes, which somehow got lost, were recently rediscovered in someone else's papers at the Smithsonian. Divided into 15 categories ("Woman Tales," "Neatest Trick Tales," etc.), the stories as she jotted them down range from mere jokes of a few paragraphs to three-page episodes. Many are set "in slavery time," with "massa" portrayed as an often-gulled, but always potentially punitive, presence. There are a variety of "how come" and trickster stories, written in dialect. Acting the part of the good anthropologist, Hurston is scrupulously impersonal, and, as a result, the tales bear few traces of her inimitable voice, unlike Tell My Horse, her classic study of Haitian voodoo. Though this may limit the book's appeal among general readers, it is a boon for Hurston scholars and may, as Kaplan says in her introduction, establish Hurston's importance as an African-American folklorist. (Dec.) Forecast: Hurston's name will ensure this title ample review coverage, and it should do well among lovers of folktales, particularly those curious about Hurston's career in the field. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Folklorist Hurston, who died in 1960, collected these stories in the late 1920s from African Americans in the rural South. The tales range from one liners to more complex stories, divided by subject: God tales, neatest trick tales, preacher tales, devil tales, and so on. Hurston replicates the vernacular in which these were told. In this recorded version, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis perform and are able to include the often sly, often sparkling wit of the original tellers. A real treat for students of folklore, black culture, or anyone who likes hearing good stories well-told. Nann Blaine Hilyard, Lake Villa Dist. Lib., IL Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

This entertaining collection, which was left unpublished in 1929 and only recently unearthed, is a fine companion to Hurston's earlier volumes, Tell My Horse (1937) and Mules and Men (1935). The late (1891-1960) author of the classic novels Jonah's Gourd Vine and Their Eyes Were Watching God was also a knowledgeable folklorist, as we learn again from John Edgar Wideman's tributory foreword and Editor Kaplan's informative introduction. The latter discusses Hurston's energetic research into indigenous tales and legends, supported by minimal grants, the WPA, and a wealthy white patron. The stories themselves-ranging from single-sentence utterances to fully detailed and developed anecdotes-are arranged in 17 specific categories focusing on such subjects as gender relations ("Women Tales"); racial inequity and enmity ("Massa and White Folks Tales"); creation stories, many akin to Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus stories ("Talking Animal Tales"); and several varieties of folk supernaturalism ("God Tales," "Devil Tales"). Frequent use of racial epithets and dialect reminiscent of minstrel shows will probably offend many contemporary readers, but are indisputable evidence of the authenticity of Hurston's presentations: in almost every case of stories she heard directly from ordinary people, many of them illiterate. There is inevitable repetition, but not as much as one might expect. And there are many pleasures: impudent alternative versions of familiar biblical tales and good-natured mockery of religious truisms ("What in the hell does ...[an] angel need with ... [Jacob's] ladder when he's got wings"); sly references to racial imperatives (a black man falling off a roof notices he'sabout to land on a white woman-"so he turnt right roun' and fell back upon dat house"); a ribald explanation of why women don't serve in the army, and several clever one-liners about the physical (and marital) problems encountered by snails. A rich harvest of native storytelling.