Review: Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston
“Folklore, Hurston said, is the art people create before they find out there is such a thing as art.” -Robert E. Hemenway, Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography
Over five years from the late 1920s to early 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston was writing a book about Black folklore and was struggling to get it done. But in 1935 she finally published the work Mules and Men. The book is split into two parts: Folktales and Hoodoo. In Folktales, Zora goes back to her hometown of Eatonville, FL, and hangs around some old friends who recount various folktales that explain how certain things work in life such as why animals have specific features, relations between John and Ole Massa, God and Devil stories, and so much more. Many of these stories are funny and if you already read Every Tongue Got to Confess you will see some familiar names and stories (the tales in both books were collected around the same time).
The second part of the book is on Hoodoo, which takes place in New Orleans, LA. Zora hangs out with various hoodoo doctors and participates in many hoodoo rituals that will make your mouth drop! I couldn’t and still can’t believe some of the things Zora did to write on this topic. She essentially became a hoodoo doctor herself to do this research.
As a whole, I enjoyed reading this collection. I enjoyed the hoodoo section more than the folktales. However, I like how the folktale section was written so that there were conversations and interludes between Zora’s friends. It provided a little bit more authenticity to the story.
If you want more…check out the book’s Appendix which includes work songs and hoodoo facts and figures. Every Tongue Got to Confess and Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica are great follow-up books to read after reading this book. Mules and Men also allows you to see some early thoughts about Moses and hoodoo which probably provided the foundation for her later novel Moses, Man of the Mountain.
- Edited Goodreads review from 2023.
After I finished reading Mules and Men, I was inspired to write this poem:
