"That commonality of feeling": Hurston, hybridity, and ethnography.

Preparing the manuscript of Mules and Men, Zora Neale Hurston wrote to her mentor, anthropologist Franz Boas, "full of tremors, lest you decide that you do not want to write the introduction." She knew that the book contained much "unscientific matter," according to ethnographic conventions, but she also assured Boas that "the conversations and incidents are true" (Letter to Boas, 20 Aug. 1934). Though not based strictly on "hard facts" presented in scientific format, Hurston's text captured much more than a traditional ethnography could capture. Her ethnographic texts invite fuller analysis of what they reveal about African Americans and all Americans.

Thus far, three main trends in Hurston scholarship have examined her ethnographic works. Recent scholars have acknowledged Hurston's innovative combination of fiction and anthropology. For instance, D. A. Boxwell argues that Hurston "reinvented" anthropology (608), prefiguring postmodern ethnography by challenging the scientific objectivity of the ethnographer and asserting her active presence in the text. Similarly, Sandra Dolby-Stahl maintains that the mixed-genre approach makes the text appealing to an audience beyond ethnographers. Other scholars contend that Hurston desires to "salvage" what is unique in African American culture. Mary O'Connor sees Hurston emphasizing the "specificity and difference of African American rural culture" (149), and Susanna Pavloska posits that Hurston uses anthropology "as a means of isolating African American culture from the accretions resulting from years of appropriation by the white cultural mainstream" (79). Finally, critics also have struggled with Hurston's controversial statements on race, such as this one from a draft of her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road: "[I]nstead of Race Pride being a virtue, it is a sapping vice" (249). In the essay "How it Feels to Be Colored Me," Hurston also remarks, "But I am not tragically colored.... do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it" (153). Analyzing Hurston's racial stance, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese argues that Hurston attempts to "transcend" race and avoid victim status (197). Deborah Plant views Hurston as having an "individualistic standpoint" that not only emphasizes her own self-determination and self-definition, but also promotes those same qualities in others (4). Samira Kawash sees Hurston developing a new definition of community that challenges both "the fixity and boundedness of such categories as race and nation and ... the premise of the autonomous individual whose supposed authenticity would exclude the flux of the ever changing" (179).

While these studies have advanced our understanding of the nuances in Hurston's ethnographic works, reexamining her texts in light of two cultural theorists, her contemporary and mentor Franz Boas and our own contemporary Homi Bhabha, reveals further implications of this ethnographic work as mixed genre, cultural record, and racial commentary. Boas's direction strongly influenced Hurston during her time at Columbia and after. In presenting her ethnography, she followed his dictum to apply the scientific to the everyday: "[A] clear understanding of the principles of anthropology illuminates the social processes of our own times and may show us, if we are ready to listen to its teachings, what to do and what to avoid" (Anthropology 11). Hurston echoes Boas's contention in The Mind of Primitive Man (1911) that "there is no close relation between race and culture" (196); she articulates a similar stance in a draft of Dust Tracks: "After all, the word 'race' is a loose classification of physical characteristics. It tells nothing about the insides of people" (249). Affirming Boas's division of race from culture and his ideas of cultural relativism, Hurston also employed what anthropologist Melville Herskovits deemed Boas's "major theoretical contribution": "[T]he concept of culture as a dynamic, changing force, to be understood only if it is recognized as a manifestation of the 'mental life' of man" (72).

It is this cultural fluidity, which Hurston documented in her ethnographic texts, that I wish to explore in greater depth. Boas clearly recognized that Hurston demonstrated cultural dynamics uniquely in her ethnographic works. Writing the preface to Mules and Men, he praises the way Hurston "throws into relief ... the peculiar amalgamation of African and European tradition which is so important for understanding historically the character of American Negro life ..." (xiv). Finally, of recent theoretical contributions, Homi Bhabha's notion of a "cultural hybridity that entertains difference without assumed or imposed hierarchy" (4) usefully characterizes the combinations and potentialities Hurston captures. I argue that she records the "interstitial passage between fixed identifications" (Bhabha 4) in her ethnographic works. Rather than salvaging a supposedly fading African American culture, Hurston writes a hybrid text to reveal a hybrid and multi-directional cultural movement that far from threatening national stability, rather could enhance it.

Boasian training in objectivity and accuracy provided an important foundation for Hurston's ethnographic projects. As her correspondence indicates, Hurston consulted with Boas frequently, seeking his advice and affirmation. Preparing the material for Mules and Men, she writes to him, "I have tried to be as exact as possible. Keep to the exact dialect as closely as I could, having the story teller to tell it to me word for word as I write ... so that I shall not let myself creep in unconsciously" (Letter to Boas, 20 Oct. 1929). Hurston considers her responsibilities carefully, self consciously constructing an authoritative text that will validly represent the culture she has studied. To be "exact" means providing voice to her informants, restricting her own presence in the text. However, Hurston also creates a careful balance so that both ethnographer and informant appear very prominently and personally in the text.

To achieve a greater accuracy, Hurston complicates the notion of objectivity, creating unusual roles both for herself and for her informants. The ethnographer becomes more than participant-observer, the informants more than informants, resulting in a hybrid text that is more than/other than ethnography. Scholars discussing Mules and Men often describe Hurston as almost a character in a novel, rather than a mere participant-observer, who supercedes the constrictions of genre.

For instance, Beth Harrison argues that Hurston creates an "ethnographic fiction" that will "ultimately subvert" Boasian standards of objectivity and accuracy (90). While for Harrison Hurston's method "implicitly asks her readers to question the accuracy of the material she collects" (91), I posit that through such genre hybridization, Hurston actually inserts subjectivity in the cause of greater accuracy. As character/narrator/ethnographer, Hurston gathers more information from her informants ("Sure, Ah wanna hear you tell 'em [folk tales] till daybreak if you will" [10]), injects her persona into the text ("I was delighted. The town had not changed" [7]), clarifies the contexts of stories and cultural practices ("The brother in black puts a laugh in every vacant place in his mind. His laugh has a hundred meanings" [62]), and provides smooth transitions ("The very next afternoon, as usual, the gregarious part of the town's population gathered on the store porch" [19]). Hurston does not stand back from her informants or their activities to catalog practices and analyze them. By explicitly showing her involvement with her informants, she demonstrates how thoroughly she gathers information and how comfortably and openly informants provide it. In fact, as a hybrid author, Hurston processes and responds to her ethnographic findings along with her audience, even leaving much of the material "raw" and open to further interpretation from her readers. She acts as an important catalyst in the text, but not the primary focus of it.

Akin to Harrison, Roland Bush recognizes Mules and Men as a "self-fashioning" narrative for Hurston herself, reconciling personal and professional roles (15), but Hurston also allows the text to become self-fashioning for her informants as well. Hurston's biographer Robert Hemenway describes the narrator Hurston as a "curiously retiring figure" and a "self-effacing reporter" who leaves plenty of room for her informants in the text (164). Preserving informant voices precisely, Hurston even credits specific informants for their stories. They clearly act as participants in the text and enjoy contributing. For instance, before one of his tales, John French insists, "you be sho and tell de folks Ah tole it" (47). The anthropologist Hurston invites informants to play an active role in developing the text. After she eases her way into a Polk County community by singing "John Henry," she "got confidential and told them all what I wanted" (65). She has created an environment of partnership with her informants, who develop an enthusiasm for sharing stories and helping her to gather them: "[T]he [storytelling] contest was a huge success in every way. I not only collected a great deal of material but it started individuals coming to me privately to tell me stories they had no chance to tell during the contest" (65). Hurston implies several levels of "success" here: As ethnographer she receives more material, and her informants both appreciate anew their collective folk culture and recognize its importance to others. The ethnographic interaction boosts self-esteem among community members, benefiting both ethnographer and informants. Hurston seems to recognize, as do contemporary ethnographers, that ethnography needs to serve the studied culture in some way, and she facilitates this process. (1) Thus, Hurston's informants become almost co-authors of her hybrid text, rendering it, multi-genre and also multi-authored.

While privileging the voices of informants and presenting her material in an unconventional, almost novelistic format, Hurston carefully preserves her ethnographic content in Mules and Men. This presentation includes the circumstances of storytelling in the context of parties, dances, fishing trips, work environments, and other social settings that illustrate more of community life than do the stories alone. In one case, Hurston's companions tell tales to delay working, in retaliation for supervisors' adding extra tasks during slack time. Joe Willard cautions his co-workers: "Wait a minute, fellows, wese walkin' too fast. At dis rate we'll be there befo' we have time to talk some mo' about Ole Massa and John" (72). While making the text livelier and more engaging, such contextualization also increases detail and presumably accuracy as well. In this way, Hurston remains truer to her subject, fulfilling in a new and different way Boasian ideals of accuracy. Conversely, she complains to Boas that her contemporary collectors of African American folklore Howard Odum and Guy Johnson have been irresponsible and made "six or seven songs out of one song and ... one song out of six or seven," while "[t]hey have distorted by tearing segments from a whole and bloating the bit out of all proportion.... Some of it would be funny if they were not serious scientists; or are they?" (Letter to Boas, 20 Oct. 1929) Hurston's representation may deviate from standard scientific format, but apparently in contrast to Odum and Johnson, she strives more than they to retain the essential content. Hurston redefines what it means to be a scientist faithful to the field, collecting not only precise materials, but also enriching their representation with fuller background and enriching the lives of her informants in the process.

Along with the objectivity and accuracy ideals inculcated by Boas and interpreted distinctly by Hurston, she addressed another classic goal of anthropology, salvage. Salvage anthropology assumes that simple or "primitive," typically non-Western cultures are disappearing so that scientists quickly must record them. (2) I agree with O'Connor and Pavloska that Hurston aims to preserve a unique African American aesthetic through her ethnographic texts; nevertheless, although some elements of salvage do appear in Hurston's work, the priority of salvage comes into question. Early in Mules and Men, Hurston remarks to one informant, George Thomas, that African American folk tales "are a lot more valuable than you might think. We want to set them down before it's too late" (8). This passage suggests time running out, an urgency to save what might be lost, or to "isolate" African American culture, in Pavloska's terminology (79). However, Hurston allows Thomas to undercut this framework of salvage, as he remarks that there is "no danger" of everybody forgetting the tales since telling "lies [folk tales]" is "all some people is good for" (8). Thomas articulates the constancy and community function of the tales. They are "valuable," but it is not "too late" for them, which signals that Hurston implies not an urgent need to save the tales, but a compelling desire to share them. Since Hurston grants her informants significant voice in the text, having Thomas clarify the status of these tales shows that conventional salvage is not her priority.

Salvage would imply a static, insular culture about to be eliminated as members die out or as another culture absorbs it; however, Hurston uncovers that the culture she observes is thriving, not declining. She sets out in search of the unique, and she does discover much of "our own unbelievable originality," as she praises it in Dust Tracks (285). Yet she also uncovers much that is borrowed, revamped, reordered. Hurston finds a dynamic, changing, lively "hybrid" culture that survives not in spite of, but while including interaction with other cultures. Some of the folk material in Mules and Men has European or other non-African origins, though it may have been transformed in some way. As Hurston remarks, "even the Bible was made over to suit our vivid imagination" (3). Several verses of the work song "John Henry" "show internal evidence of being interpolated from English ballads" (248). She finds folktales co-opted by or about other ethnic groups: "IT]he familiar drummer-type of tale about two Irishmen, Pat and Mike, or two Jews as the case might be. Some were the European folk-tales undiluted, like Jack and the Beanstalk" (19-20).

An anthropologist cannot salvage something that is not pure from the start, and this community has not been as insulated as readers may have expected. Hurston freely acknowledges discoveries that demonstrate cultural combination rather than isolation. Nevertheless, she is wary of including too many tales that are lightly veiled adaptations, as she comments to Boas, "I have omitted all Pat and Mike stories. It is obvious that these are not negroid, but very casual borrowings. The same goes for the Jewish and Italian stories" (Letter to Boas, 20 Oct. 1929). She also remarks in Mules and Men that "there was little need for outside help" for "Negro imagination" (20). An inherent African American creative spirit invents new stories, adapts African stories, transforms European stories, and combines material of any origin to suit present purposes. While borrowings exist, Hurston emphasizes that creativity and adaptability remain fundamental cultural wealth.

That Hurston includes any stories of obviously non-African origin indicates that she considers recording these adapted tales important to reflecting accurately the cultural dynamics of this rural, Southern, African American community. Through this ethnography, Hurston documents the "difference" without "hierarchy" that Bhabha proposes, as she explores the borrowings and reproductions evident in African American folklore. For instance, in Mules and Men, she includes the tale of her young informant Julius Henry, "a story of European origin" that has been "colored by the negro mouth" (42). The initial story apparently concerns a peasant repeatedly outwitting a lord through fortune telling, and it evolves into a John and master tale, culminating in John's drowning the master. While not deriving specifically from African American experience, this story draws parallels between slavery and feudal or class-divided experience. It comes straight out of the folk/historic past of many white Americans, and even the direct experience of some recent immigrants, exemplifying that Hurston's ethnographic work is not limited to African American struggles. She illuminates African American experiences, but some material she selects also highlights connections to the experiences of others. The hybridity of the story itself reflects the hybridity of informants, who culturally and even biologically incorporate African, European, and perhaps other "origins." In addition, the tale speaks to the hybridity of readers whose backgrounds combine races, ethnicities, and economic classes, ancestors of whom could stand in for various figures in the tale. Admitting these relationships into the text increases the ethnography's appeal to a variety of readers, who may recognize not only the tale, but also the social inequities and resistance strategies it chronicles.

In "Characteristics of Negro Expression," published in Nancy Cunard's 1934 Negro anthology (Bambara 5), Hurston reinforces the hybridity she documents in Mules and Men: "Negro folklore is not a thing of the past. It is still in the making. Its great variety shows the adaptability of the black man: nothing is too old or too new, domestic or foreign, high or low, for his use" (56). Hurston presents African American folklore as in process, always current, active, and flexible, gathering materials from everywhere. Discussing this essay, Karen Jacobs argues that Hurston cannot escape a "reliance on racial, cultural, and aesthetic hierarchies" (339). Yet Hurston supersedes these hierarchies by emphasizing the ongoing interchange and indivisibility of racial, cultural, and aesthetic components. Belying a fading culture to be salvaged, African American folklore grows and gathers strength, absorbing and transforming elements of other cultures, rather than being subsumed by them. Most importantly, the nature of African American folklore reflects African American culture overall, as adaptable, improvisational, and creative.

Expanding her discussion beyond folklore exclusively, Hurston demonstrates this adaptability in other areas of African American culture, refuting the commonplace "gospel" that "the Negro is lacking in originality" (58). In order to accomplish this, Hurston draws upon her anthropological knowledge first to generalize about cultural innovations. As she explains,

   It is obvious that to get back to original
   sources is much too difficult for any
   group to claim very much as a certainty.
   What we mean by originality is the
   modification of ideas. The most ardent
   admirer of the great Shakespeare cannot
   claim first source even for him. It is
   his treatment of the borrowed material
   (58).

Evoking an icon of Western culture, Hurston challenges readers to evaluate African American culture by the same standards and discover similar achievements. African Americans distill cultural elements already circulating, remaking them as needed; moreover, African American ingenuity in this process qualifies as "very original" (58). As Hurston observes, "While [the African American] lives and moves in the midst of a white civilization, everything that he touches is re-interpreted for his own use. He has modified the language, mode of food preparation, practice of medicine, and most certainly the religion of his new country ..." (58). Hurston emphasizes African Americans' active engagement with rather than passive absorption of cultural elements as they participate in a hybrid culture.

In "Characteristics of Negro Expression," Hurston's treatment of jazz music also illustrates the hybridity in African American and American culture overall, a multi-leveled, continuous process of cultural exchange. Hurston reminds readers that jazz grew out of an African American "modification of the whites' musical instruments" but also that this African American "interpretation has been adopted by the white man himself and then re-interpreted" (59). Here, at least three levels of adaptation exist, improvisation not only in the moment of performance, but also of the musical genre itself as artists of different backgrounds approach it repeatedly. Hurston observes white jazz-band leader Paul Whiteman "giving an imitation of a Negro orchestra making use of white-invented musical instruments in a Negro way" (59). Addressing the issue of "originality," she indicates that in this case whites are no more "original" than African Americans; they too borrow and rework cultural elements. Through jazz, one sees most explicitly the multi-directional cultural movement that advances not only African American culture but also American culture as a whole. Hurston articulates this process of hybridity as a cultural foundation: "Thus has arisen a new art in the civilized world, and thus has our so-called civilization come. The exchange and re-exchange of ideas between groups" (59). She launches from this example of art into an analysis of United States culture as a fluid process, the dynamic force that Boas affirmed, and she indicates that African American contributions help it to develop. Through jazz, an appreciated and welcomed musical form, Hurston dispels several myths about "Negro" culture. First, she shows that African Americans do not lack unique cultural wealth and originality. Second, she asserts that African American culture is not vanishing in preference to white American culture. Third, she demonstrates that, rather, African Americans offer cultural contributions to other Americans. In addition, Hurston documents the various directions of cultural exchange among Americans that occur constantly and function as a basis of "civilization."

In this same essay, Hurston offers an example of African Americans' influence on language; she cites the way that they have altered the pronunciation and enriched the vocabulary of white, Southern-American English. According to Hurston, "the American Negro has done wonders to the English language.... [H]e has made over a great part of the tongue to his liking and has his revision accepted by the ruling class. No one listening to a Southern white man talk could deny this" (51). Not only do African Americans flavor English, non-blacks approve and adopt their alterations. This observation asserts a productive rather than a threatening impact on American cultures, as the hybrid English language moves beyond the African American community. Through this example, Hurston again emphasizes that white Americans, too, are becoming hybrid, as they incorporate cultural offerings of their African American counterparts. Whether or not they acknowledge this process, they have grown used to it and benefit from it. Hurston merely clarifies a long-established reality.

Other Hurston essays from the Negro anthology, such as "Shouting" and "Mother Catherine," explore the eclectic nature of African American religion, also mentioned in "Characteristics of Negro Expression." The hybridity of African American tradition shows clearly in the practice of "shouting," an "emotional explosion" during church services that may involve loud vocalizing, thrashing movements, and fainting, often occurring during the sermon ("Shouting" 91). Hurston explains shouting as a "survival of the African 'possession' by the gods. In Africa it is sacred to the priesthood or acolytes, in America it has become generalized. The implication is the same, however, it is a sign of special favor from the spirit that it chooses to drive out the individual consciousness temporarily and use the body for its expression" (91). While shouting exemplifies a specific retention of African religious practice, notably, American shouting evolves into a more egalitarian experience with any member worthy of favor/possession, as opposed to priests exclusively. Maintaining its function of expressing the inexpressible, shouting illustrates a democracy in spirituality in America, combining African traditions with Euro-American philosophies. Even if America as a whole has not met its promises of equality fully yet, in the African American church, participants may experience a more complete feeling of favor and acceptance. Thus, shouting demonstrates a confluence of African and European traditions manifested in a novel and hybrid form.

While "Shouting" features the combination of African spiritual concepts and American political ideals, Hurston's essay "Mother Catherine" shows even greater eclecticism in an African American church. "Mother Catherine" features an African American religious leader in Florida, presiding over a church diverse both in religious roots and in congregants. Her church "compound" features a "Greek cross" and a "room of the Sacred Heart" with panels containing a "snake design" of "African background" (99-100). As Hurston remarks, "There is a catholic flavor about the place, but it is certainly not catholic. She has taken from all the religions she knows anything about any feature that pleases her" (102). Incorporating symbolic and theological elements from Christianity in Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant varieties, as well as Native African religions and other traditions, Mother Catherine establishes a hybrid, matriarchal religion that "encourages originality" among her followers, who are "white and colored ... as many of one race as the other" (101, 104). Here again, Hurston observes the African syncretizing with other cultural traditions to create something new, only possible perhaps in the hybrid environment of America. In addition, as in English language modification, others besides African Americans welcome and benefit from combined traditions.

Another example of cultural wealth stemming from the African American community, "High John De Conquer" became the focus of an article Hurston published in the October 1943 American Mercury. This ethnographic essay brings together folktales, an informant interview, and contemporary applications concerning the African American cultural hero John. The text clearly reflects a Boasian split between race and culture and advocates American cultural hybridity, as Hurston presents the mythical John as a gift to America. She opens the essay with a controversial claim: "You will take another look at us [African Americans] and say that we are still black and, ethnologically speaking, you will be right. But nationally and culturally, we are as white as the next one" (139). Relegating race to "a loose classification of physical characteristics" (Dust Tracks 249), Hurston asserts a more important cultural unity, coded by the term "white."

Of course, Hurston does not imply that to be American is to be white. Her ethnographic writing all along has worked to undermine that premise and replace it with an appreciation of American cultural hybridity. She speaks ironically of "whiteness," to capture attention, knowing well that biological race does not confine or define culture, that American culture encompasses a hybrid and ever-changing collection from various sources. Indeed, nationality entails a shared commitment that African Americans fulfill. As she explains, "We have put our labor and our blood into the common causes for a long time. We have given the rest of the nation song and laughter" (139). Hurston asserts that African Americans are as committed as white Americans to national concerns, particularly the ongoing war effort, and the essay aims to encourage readers through the spirit of African American folklore.

As Hurston expounds, for African Americans, High John de Conquer has acted as a "hope-bringer" since slavery time, a stabilizing, nurturing, clever hero and trickster. Exemplified in Julius Henry's tale of John as wily fortune-teller, cited earlier from Mules and Men, most often High John outwits Old Master. The idea of John helped the slaves to endure "when and where the work was the hardest, and the lot the most cruel" ("High John" 139). Relating the strategies of this hero, the slaves "pulled the covers up over their souls and kept them from all hurt, harm and danger and made them a laugh and a song" (140). Secret tales of John and his exploits helped them to retain hope and dignity in the worst conditions, "making a way out of no-way" (141). Evoking the mythic traditions of many readers, Hurston compares High John to King Arthur, who symbolizes national (in this case, English) power and who "waits to return when his people shall call again" (142). She also remarks, "Like Jason in search of the golden fleece, John and his party went to many places, and had numerous adventures" (146). Through Hurston's mythological juxtapositions, her readers may better understand and appreciate High John. He claims a place alongside classical European heroes, enjoying epic proportions and carrying his people along with him, imaginatively and spiritually. He builds up a national power and awaits his people's call to fortify them when needed. Hurston's informant, Shady Anne Sutton, insists that High John taught "the black folks so they knowed a hundred years ahead of time that freedom was coming.... That war was just a sign and symbol of the thing" (142-43). In the same way, Hurston implies, the spirit of High John also could augur freedom emerging from the current world war, the rout of fascism and genocide. To a nation struggling under the burdens of war and uncertainty, the concept of an improvisational High John offers hope again that justice will prevail.

To afford insight on the current political situation, Hurston traces the progress of African Americans and the changing role of High John. After slavery, he had receded, since black people no longer needed him in the same way. Citing the active cultural hybridity then developing in America, Hurston explains that African Americans have "traded" the "laugh and song" given by High John to "the other Americans for the things they could use like education and property, and acceptance" (148). As they have entered more fully into the common cultural mix and gained increasing privileges, African Americans have decreased their need for resistance through a figure like High John. However, the improvisational spirit and tenacity of High John persist and can circulate among others. Now, Hurston posits, all Americans together confront a collective challenge. Taking inspiration from High John, those not fighting in the armed services can still contribute at home, since part of what threatens the nation is lost confidence and weakened resolve, factors John had prevented during slavery that could also undermine current military efforts. Therefore, Hurston comforts readers with the "subtle power" embodied in High John de Conquer, a "source of courage that endures, and laughter" (148). She assures them:

   If the news from overseas reads bad,
   and the nation inside seems like it is
   stuck in the Tar Baby, listen hard, and
   you will hear John de Conquer treading
   on his singing-drum. You will
   know then, that no matter how bad
   things look now, it will be worse for
   those who seek to oppress us. Even if
   your hair comes yellow, and your eyes
   are blue, John de Conquer will be
   working for you just the same. (148)

High John represents a spirit of inevitable justice, the painstaking but undeniable defeat of racial and ethnic oppression. As Hurston writes, a true national unity, racially and culturally, will multiply American's chances for success against its enemies, halting the spread of Aryan hate. Ironically, despite African American military contributions, such as those of the Tuskegee Airmen, continued discrimination and segregation, even in the military, compromise America's cause. Hurston presents a choice: Either High John can signal opposition and resistance within American society, or he can signal unity against an exterior threat. The pivotal factor is to "make sure our cause is right" (148). If racial relationships at home are resolved, then Americans can fight more effectively abroad. The lesson in both conflicts persists: "John knew that it is written where it cannot be erased, that nothing shall live on human flesh and prosper" (141). Hurston challenges readers to ensure that, at home and abroad, they uphold this maxim. Hoping to heighten readers' awareness of the unity already present in their hybrid culture, she endeavors to strengthen their ability to draw upon its resources. "High John De Conquer" illustrates Hurston once again applying ethnography to the "everyday," as Boas encouraged. She insists that the shared hybrid culture in which African Americans participate strengthens the nation as a whole.

In the 1950 Negro Digest essay "What White Publishers Won't Print," Hurston exhorts the literary establishment to promote "[n]ational coherence and solidarity" by fostering a "thorough understanding of the various groups within [the] nation" (169). Failing to perceive the receptive nature of African American hybridity, many white Americans either view African Americans as hopelessly primitive and separate or as hopelessly primitive and corruptive. Throughout her ethnographic writing, Hurston strives to resolve racial tensions by complicating stereotypical notions of African Americans, showing them as sharers with other Americans in a common, changing, hybrid tradition. Prefiguring Bhabha's theory, Hurston shows African Americans and indeed all Americans to occupy "interstitial" space, a culture constantly in flux rather than in fixed and mutually exclusive positions that form one nation. In keeping with Boasian concepts, she works to sever biologically based ideas of race from the flexible realities of culture. She analyzes African American contributions to language, religion, and folklore, but she also emphasizes African Americans' absorption of new values and traditions as well, for, she argues, "there are still too many who refuse to believe in the ingestion and digestion of western culture as yet" ("What White Publishers" 170).

In Anthropology and Modern Life, Franz Boas had suggested that anthropology "illuminates the social processes of our own times and may show us, if we are ready to listen to its teachings, what to do and what to avoid" (11). Affirming this direct application of anthropology, Hurston writes ethnographically to elucidate broader aspects of African American life. She follows her own dictum to show that "minorities do think, and think about something other than the race problem. That they are very human and internally, according to natural endowment, are just like everybody else" ("What White Publishers" 171). Rejecting salvage anthropology, she demonstrates that separating or preserving African American culture from the rest of society is not necessary or realistic. Neither is "white-washing" African Americans the answer. Her works illustrate the "incisive and intimate stories from the inside" that she encourages others to record also (173). She recognizes that "It is well known that there must be a body of waived matter, let us say, things accepted and taken for granted by all in a community before there can be that commonality of feeling. The usual phrase is having things in common" (171). Using the ethnographer's lens to document how far this process of developing "things in common" has progressed, Hurston works to move America beyond a preoccupation with the "race problem" and to promote a harmonious cultural hybridity in its place.

Notes

The author would like to thank the AAUP and the administration at New York Institute of Technology for grant support that facilitated researching and writing this article.

(1.) For instance, James Spradley asserts the ethnographer's obligation to perform service for the studied culture (16-25). He suggests consulting with informants on research agendas potentially useful to both parties in the ethnographic exchange.

(2.) See the introduction to Marcus and Fischer for an overview of the salvage goal in anthropology.

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Hurston, Zora Neale. "Characteristics of Negro Expression." 1934. Bambara 49-68.

--. Dust Tracks on a Road. 1942. New York: Harper, 1996.

--. "High John De Conquer." 1943. The Complete Stories. New York: Harper, 1996. 139-48.

--. "How It Feels to Be Colored Me." 1928. Walker 152-55.

--. "Mother Catherine." 1934. The Complete Stories. New York: Harper, 1996. 99-105.

--. Mules and Men. 1935. New York: Harper, 1990.

--. "Shouting." 1934. Bambara 91-94.

--. "To Franz Boas." 20 October 1929. The Professional Correspondence of Franz Boas. Microform. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1972.

--. "To Franz Boas." 20 August 1934. The Professional Correspondence of Franz Boas. Microform. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1972.

--. "What White Publishers Won't Print." 1950. Walker 169-73.

Jacobs, Karen. "From 'Spy-glass' to 'Horizon': Tracking the Anthropological Gaze in Zora Neale Hurston." Novel: A Forum on Fiction 30.3 (1997): 329-60.

Kawash, Samira. Dislocating the Color Line: Identity, Hybridity, and Singularity in African American Narrative. Palo Alto: Stanford UP, 1997.

Marcus, George, and Michael Fischer. Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986.

O'Connor, Mary. "Zora Neale Hurston and Talking Between Cultures." Canadian Review of American Studies (1992) Special Issue, Part I: 141-61.

Pavloska, Susanna. "Zora Neale Hurston's Ethnological Fiction." Modern Primitives: Race and Language in Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and Zora Neale Hurston. New York: Garland, 2000. 75-98.

Plant, Deborah. Every Tub Must Sit on Its Own Bottom: The Philosophy and Politics of Zora Neale Hurston. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1995.

Spradley, James. Participant Observation. New York: Holt, 1980.

Walker, Alice, ed. I Love Myself When I am Laughing and then Again When I am Looking Mean and Impressive. New York: Feminist, 1979.

Lori Jirousek is Assistant Professor of New York Institute of Technology, Manhattan. She specializes in 19th- and 20th-century American literature, particularly multicultural literature. Dr. Jirousek has published articles in American Literary Realism and MELUS and is completing a book on American immigrant writers and ethnography.