Back In Their World
After Howard Ashman & Alan Menken’s “Part of Your World”; Inspired by Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men (1935)
Look at these pages
Aren’t they neat?
Wouldn’t you think Zora’s folklore collection is complete?
Wouldn’t you think she is a scholar
The scholar who has everything?
Look at this trove
Treasures untold
How many stories can one book hold?
Looking around here you’d think
Sure, Zora’s got everything
She’s got pencils and pens in her pocket
She’s got white benefactors galore
You heard of a Guggenheim fellowship?
She’s got two!
But who cares?
No big deal
Zora wants more!
She wants to be where the people are
She wants to hear, wants to hear those folktales
Some of them funny and some of them serious but most importantly they’re Black
Listening to stories, won’t get her far
Writing is required for collecting lies
Black dialect is key for the story to be authentic
Down where they walk, down where they talk
Down where they work all day in the sun
Wanderin’ free, Zora wishes she could be
Back in their world
What would she give if she could live back with her people?
What would she pay to spend a day with a hoodoo doctor?
Down in New Orleans, they understand
That roots have a specific kind of magic
Fixing court cases, breaking up affairs
Killing people
Zora’s ready to know what the people know
Ask ’em her questions and get some stories
What is a moral and why does it, what’s the phrase?
Teach a lesson?
When’s it her turn?
Wouldn’t she love, love to reexplore Eatonville, Florida?
Out of Harlem, New York
Zora wishes she could be
Back in their world
Author’s Note: After I finished reading Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston the thought came to my mind that Zora was really serious about her folklore research, especially her study of hoodoo practices. I told a friend she took the song “Part of Your World” literally. I started writing this poem after listening to the episode “‘The Little Mermaid’ and the Black Princess Test” from the podcast Into It with Sam Sanders. Thanks to Zora Neale Hurston, Howard Ashman, Alan Menken, Sam Sanders, Aria Halliday, Karen Talley, Classy Green and The Black Reader Experience.
