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

Book Cover Images image of Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folk-Tales from the Gulf States

by Zora Neale Hurston

Publication Date: Nov 27, 2001
List Price: $25.00
Format: Hardcover, 316 pages
Classification: Nonfiction
ISBN13: 9780060188931
Imprint: Harper
Publisher: HarperCollins
Parent Company: News Corp

Read a Description of Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folk-Tales from the Gulf States


Book Reviewed by Thumper


I’m about to write words that I never thought that I would write. I never believed that I would ever be in the position of reviewing the newest, latest book by ZORA NEALE HURSTON! Yep, Zora Neale Hurston has a new book on the shelves. Every Tongue Got To Confess: Negro Folk-tales from the Gulf States is a book of folk-tales that Hurston collected in the 1927. Hurston completed a manuscript of these folk-tales, some were used in Mules and Men, and the rest lingered in limbo, moving from one storage facility to another. I loved Every Tongue Got To Confess. The book is filled with humorous and poignant tales that opens, blooms like flowers in spring, an aspect of African-American life, in a time and places that living is hard. Every Tongue Got To Confess illustrates the strength and humor of our ancestors. Lord knows being black and living in America is not for the weak-hearted.

Folk-tales are best told orally, the vocal inflections, facial expressions, comic timing, and atmosphere all affect the tales. While other folk-tale collections document the tales, Every Tongue Got To Confess has Hurston’s it-looks-easy lyrical style, and sure hand is all over the tales. Hurston is a literary parrot, imitating, transcribing the elements of the oral traditions in which these tales are spawned ensuring that unlike the wind these tales will never be lost. Every Tongue Got To Confess is discovering that your grandmother’s costume jewelry isn't rhinestones but diamonds.

 

Read Harper’s description of Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folk-Tales from the Gulf States.

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