“Magnolia Flower” was originally published in The Spokesman, July 1925.
“Muttsy” was originally published in Opportunity, June 1925.
“Black Death” was first published posthumously in The Complete Stories of Zora Neale Hurston, collected and edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sieglinde Lemke by Harper Perennial, 1995.
“Spunk” was originally published in Opportunity, August 1926.
“’Possum or Pig?” was originally published in The Forum, September 1926.
“The Eatonville Anthology” was originally published serially in The Messenger, September–November 1926.
“Sweat” was originally published in Fire, November 1926.
“Under the Bridge” was originally published in The X-Ray, December 1926.
“Book of Harlem” was first published posthumously in Zora Neale Hurston: Novels and Stories, collected and edited by Cheryl A. Wall by Library of America, 1995.
“The Book of Harlem” was originally published in The Pittsburgh Courier, February 12, 1927.
“The Back Room” was originally published in The Pittsburgh Courier, February 19, 1927.
“Monkey Junk” was originally published in The Pittsburgh Courier, March 5, 1927.
“The Country in the Woman” was originally published in The Pittsburgh Courier, March 26, 1927.
“The Gilded Six-Bits” was originally published in Story, August 1933.
“She Rock” was originally published in The Pittsburgh Courier, August 5, 1933.
“The Fire and the Cloud” was originally published in Challenge, September 1934.
About the Author
ZORA NEALE HURSTON was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist. She was the author of four novels (Jonah’s Gourd Vine, 1934; Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937; Moses, Man of the Mountain, 1939; and Seraph on the Suwanee, 1948); three books of folklore (Mules and Men, 1935; Tell My Horse, 1938; and Every Tongue Got to Confess, 2001); an autobiography (Dust Tracks on a Road, 1942); an ethnography (Barracoon, 2018); and more than fifty short stories, essays, and plays. She attended Howard University, Barnard College, and Columbia University, and graduated from Barnard College in 1928. She was born on January 7, 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama, and grew up in Eatonville, Florida. She died in Fort Pierce, Florida, in 1960. In 1973, Alice Walker had a headstone placed at her grave site with this epitaph: ZORA NEALE HURSTON: “A GENIUS OF THE SOUTH.”
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Also by Zora Neale Hurston
Jonah’s Gourd Vine
Mules and Men
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Tell My Horse
Moses, Man of the Mountain
Dust Tracks on a Road
Seraph on the Suwanee
Mule Bone
The Complete Stories
Every Tongue Got to Confess
Barracoon
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
HITTING A STRAIGHT LICK WITH A CROOKED STICK. Copyright © 2020 by the Zora Neale Hurston Trust. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Cover art by Bradley Theodore
Cover design by Stephen Brayda
FIRST EDITION
Digital Edition JANUARY 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-291581-8
Version 11282019
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