Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick

Stories from the Harlem Renaissance

By: Zora Neale Hurston

Narrated by: Aunjanue Ellis

Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's summary

From "one of the greatest writers of our time" (Toni Morrison) - the author of Barracoon and Their Eyes Were Watching God - a collection of remarkable stories, including eight "lost" Harlem Renaissance tales now available to a wide audience for the first time.

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In 1925, Barnard student Zora Neale Hurston - the sole black student at the college - was living in New York, "desperately striving for a toe-hold on the world." During this period, she began writing short works that captured the zeitgeist of African-American life and transformed her into one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Nearly a century later, this singular talent is recognized as one of the most influential and revered American artists of the modern period.

Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick is an outstanding collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, racism and sexism that proudly reflect African-American folk culture. Brought together for the first time in one volume, they include eight of Hurston’s "lost" Harlem stories, which were found in forgotten periodicals and archives. These stories challenge conceptions of Hurston as an author of rural fiction and include gems that flash with her biting, satiric humor, as well as more serious tales reflective of the cultural currents of Hurston’s world. All are timeless classics that enrich our understanding and appreciation of this exceptional writer’s voice and her contributions to America’s literary traditions.

©2020 Zora Neale Hurston (P)2020 HarperAudio

Great storytelling.

Some of the stories are hard to digest but enjoyed overall. I laughed a lot.

Wonderfully Performed

Aunjanue Ellis brought these words to life! Excellent performance of this collection of witty short stories. Kudos to Ms. Hurston. Each character and storyline were phenomenal! Great listen…

Real Life Situations!!

We did this as a small group book review. We laughed & related this to personal , family & friends situations. It was also written as it was related to biblical times. overall, a very good read.

Beautiful Stories

The stories were beautiful and the narrator was amazing! Some stories were so thought provoking, I had to go back and listen again.

Very entertaining...

The narrator was excellent. I really enjoyed this book. Some of the short stories were very funny.

Good stories

excellent narration of a variety of the authors works. I enjoyed especially her stories of Eatonville and of Caroline.

The Beat to her Own Crooked Drumstick

I recently read a book about the Blues that included several chapters about Blues literature -- primarily Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. I didn't think it was fair to the writers to pigeonhole their work under a musical form, but I was intrigued enough to want to check them out. The title of this story collection by Hurston even contains a musical reference, hitting a straight lick with a crooked stick as a metaphor for her angle on the subjects of her stories.

I still think the concept of Blues literature is too much of a straightjacket for Hurston -- these stories have a lot more going on, being about black life in both the South and the North in the early 20th century, dealing with issues of race, gender and class, as well as migration, and most of all real life characters and their real life concerns.

There are two layers of interest here, covered in detail in the editor's introduction -- the chronological presentation of the stories, including a number of previously unknown stories only recently discovered, demonstrating Hurston's broader range of interest than previously believed, and the restoration of the natural idiom of her dialogue, which can be a challenge (if it was written by a white person, it would be the literary equivalent of blackface, but as written by Hurston it feels refreshingly authentic, especially in audio).

By the way, some readers have had problems with the extensive introduction. I found it illuminating in preparing me for what I was about to hear. If it's not working for you, just skip it. Despite my enthusiasm for both the forewords and the stories, I have to give it four stars rather than five because I really did not care for the three or four stories toward the end that were written in biblical style -- great idea, highly original, but it just didn't work for me, especially given the authentic feel of the other stories.

Story and reader

Loved the short stories and the reader was phenomenal!!! I wish she would read all the books that I choose.

Smart writing, vibrant characters

I really enjoyed the detailed worlds and vibrant characters of these stories. Cleverly told, sometimes poignant and sometimes funny. Extremely well-performed.

Great Book

I loved this book, and I loved the person who narrated the book. It was really awesome very enjoyable and kept my attention the entire time.