Boyd - Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston

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Praise for Wrapped in Rainbows

After finishing Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston I wondered which of three words best described it: magnificent, extraordinary or masterpiece. The research and interpretation of events is breathtaking, the writing precise and beautiful. The book takes such a warm, honest, all encompassing and wise view of its subject, that I read it from start to finish as though reading an adventure tale, which of course it is. Zoras life was a mammoth adventure, and it is on this journey that Boyd, as if born to do so, takes us. However, as I was sifting through superlatives I was visited by a voice that sounded very much like Zoras. That voice dismissed all concern about the praise-song I was planning and seemed content (profoundly content) with just one thought: My name is in my daughters hands, it said.

This daughter, Valerie Boyd, has written a biography of Zora Neale Hurston that will be the standard for years to come. Offering vivid splashes of Zoras colorful humor, daring individualism and refreshing insouciance, Boyd has done justice to a dauntless spirit and a heroic life.

Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple

This important and long-awaited biography is a clear-eyed and affectionate tribute to Hurstons luminous talent, elevating this daughter of the South to her rightful place among the giants of American literature and the pioneers of twentieth-century anthropology.

With impressive scholarship and sisterly empathy, Boyd captures Hurstons fierce spirit as she navigates lifes high and low moments, always slaying heartache, sorrow, and betrayal with laughter and a triumphant sense of irony.

ALelia Bundles, author of On Her Own Ground:
The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker

Valerie Boyd has paid to Zora Neale Hurston the tribute and service that any writerany human beingmight dream of getting: the enormous and patient care that, alone, produce both a truthful record and final understanding. Sad as much of its story is, Wrapped in Rainbows is finally exultant.

Reynolds Price, author of Kate Vaiden

[Hurstons] life has been lovingly and carefully retold in a felicitously readable format that will bring the general reader, and give those who have never heard of Hurston, a clear sense of her fascinating life and necessary work.

Chicago Tribune

[Boyd] not only reveals much of the carefully concealed facts of Hurstons life but comes to original conclusions through not only persistent research but acute critical insight and in consequence we are in her debt.

The Washington Times

[T]he most accurate portrait of Zora Neale Hurstons colorful life to date.

Essence

[A] gripping tale Boyd tells Hurstons life story with a detectives determination to uncover the truth.

The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

[A] significant new biography [that] resurrects Hurston in all her color and vitality and zaninessas well as in her failures and sorrows. a rich, rich read.

The Denver Post

Hurston comes through vividly. [Valerie Boyd] does a great service.

The Seattle Times

Boyd captures the writers joyful essence her effort honors the authors spirit.

The Miami Herald

[Boyd] brings one of the most pivotal figures in 20th-century literature brilliantly to life.

Kirkus Reviews, starred

[An] engrossing cornerstone biography. As Boyd adeptly and passionately analyzes Hurstons revolutionary books, intense spirituality, and myriad adventures, Hurston emerges in all her splendor.

Booklist, starred

A LISA DREW BOOK / SCRIBNER
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2003 by Valerie Boyd
Letters of Zora Neale Hurston Estate of Zora Neale Hurston

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

First Lisa Drew / Scribner trade paperback edition 2004

SCRIBNER and design are trademarks of
Macmillan Library Reference USA, Inc., used under license
by Simon & Schuster, the publisher of this work.

A LISA DREW BOOK is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Designed by Colin Joh
Text set in Janson

Manufactured in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Boyd, Valerie.
Wrapped in rainbows : the life of Zora Neale Hurston / Valerie Boyd.
p. cm.
A Lisa Drew book.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
1. Hurston, Zora Neale. 2. Novelists, American20th centuryBiography.
3. African American womenSouthern StatesBiography.
4. Women folkloristsUnited StatesBiography.
5. African American women novelistsBiography.
6. FolkloristsUnited StatesBiography.
7. African American novelistsBiography. 8. Southern StatesBiography.
I. Title.
PS3515.U789 Z63 2002
813.52dc21
[B] 2002017011

ISBN 0-684-84230-0
ISBN 978-1-4391-2541-0 (ebook)
0-7432-5329-9 (Pbk)

Permissions acknowledgments appear on page 528

To Zora Neale Hurston, for choosing me.

And

To Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, my spiritual teacher,
for illuminating every step like the rays of the sun.

I have been in Sorrows kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and a sword in my hands.

Zora Neale Hurston, 18911960

T here was never quite enough for Zora Neale Hurston in the world she grew up in, so she made up whatever she needed.

In her fathers house, on five acres of land in central Florida, young Zora lacked no material comforts. She had eight rooms to roam; a large yard carpeted with Bermuda grass; plenty of playmates; seven siblings; ample amounts of yellow Octagon laundry soap for bathing; two big china-berry trees for climbing; enough leftover boiled eggs to use as hand grenades on other children; and all the home-cured meat, garden-fresh collard greens, and Mama-made cornbread she could eat.

But Zora had other needs. She needed to know, for instance, what the end of the world was like under like the hem of a dress, as she once wrote, or if it was just a sharp drop-off into nothingness. One summer day around 1900, when she was about nine years old, Zora decided she ought to walk out to the horizon and see.

She asked a friend, a schoolmate named Carrie Roberts, to go with her. The next morning, bright and soon, Zora and Carrie were to meet by the palmettos near Zoras house to begin their journey to the edge of the world. Daunted by the daring of the thing, Carrie came to tell Zora she couldnt go. That perhaps they should wait until they were big enough to wear long dresses and old enough to stay out past sundown without earning a spanking. Zora pleaded with her friend, but she refused to go. They fought, and Zora went home, she wrote decades later, and hid under the house with my heartbreak. Still, she recalled, of my journey. I was merely lonesome for someone brave enough to undertake it with me.