It comes as a great shock to discover that the country which is your birthplace and to which you owe your life and identity has not, in its whole system of reality evolved any place for you. —James Baldwin (boldness mine) Home. A small brown place. Who would have thought standing up would be such a complex … Read more
I am a student at Columbia University.But let’s FACE IT.I DON’T DESERVE to be here.I am BLACK and I am FEMALE and IT’S BEEN SAID that I’m getting a FREE ride.But what am I? I am: Walking down the streets of Morningside Heights behind a woman who’s constantly looking over her shoulder at me as … Read more
(Re)-Education: A Matter of TraditionJanuary 27, 2004 Sitting on my desk as I write is one of this year’s now infamous Orgo Night fliers. “Who Needs Ethnic Studies?” reads the caption above a caricature of Michael Jackson. If only because I don’t quite understand it, this flier is not as objectively offensive as others from … Read more
Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Elvita Dominique’s senior thesis in the Barnard Department of History (2004). In the sections that precede this excerpt, Ms. Dominique discusses her primary sources (archival research from student newspaper and magazine articles, and interviews with black alumnae), the history of black women at Barnard before the 1960s, … Read more
The following video clips, recorded on October 2, 2003, feature members of Barnard’s black student organization, BOSS (Barnard Organization of Soul Sisters), plus one honorary member, performing some of Hurston’s best-known work. Directed by Peter Campbell and introduced and commented on by David Krasner, these excellent performances allow the audience to enter the world of … Read more
From A Beautiful Pageant by David Krasner. Copyright © 2002 by David Krasner. Reprinted with permission of Palgrave Macmillan, NY. (Available for purchase on Amazon.Com.) The location is not already there before the bridge. . .a location comes into existence only by virtue of the bridge. -Martin Heidegger (1954) Introduction I must be the bridge to nowhere / But my … Read more
On the evening of Sunday, January 10, 1932, Zora Neale Hurston premiered her folk revue The Great Day at the John Golden Theatre in New York. Based on four years of anthropological research in the southern United States and the Bahamas, the concert traced a day in the life of a railroad work camp, from daybreak until … Read more
On January 13, 1938, Zora Neale Hurston finished the essay she was writing for “The Negro in Florida,” a volume that was prepared for the Federal Writers Project. The essay, “Art and Such,” would not be published for more than four decades, but it provides rare and useful insights into Hurston’s understanding of African American … Read more
Some years ago I started writing a novel, a murder mystery set at a mythical university in Brookline, Massachusetts. In the early versions of the novel, the female protagonist was an assistant professor of English whose claim to tenure was a well-received biography of Hurston entitled The Mark of Zora. The title of my imaginary character’s … Read more
From Wrapped in Rainbows by Valerie Boyd. Copyright © 2003 by Valerie Boyd. Reprinted with permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc., NY. (Available for purchase on Amazon.Com.) By all accounts, Zora Neale Hurston possessed a quality that enabled her to walk into a roomful of strangers and, a few minutes and a few stories later, … Read more
