Mules and Men

by Zora Neale Hurston

"Simply the most exciting book on black folklore and culture I have ever read." --Roger D. Abrahams Mules and Men is the first great collection of black America's folk world. In the 1930's, Zora Neale Hurston returned to her "native village" of Eatonville, Florida to record the oral histories, sermons and songs, dating back to the time of slavery, which she remembered hearing as a child. In her quest, she found herself and her history throughout these highly metaphorical folk-tales, "big old lies," and the lyrical language of song. With this collection, Zora Neale Hurston has come to reveal'and preserve'a beautiful and important part of American culture. Zora Neale Hurston (1901-1960) was a novelist, folklorist, anthropologist and playwright whose fictional and factual accounts of black heritage are unparalleled. She is also the author of Tell My Horse, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Dust Tracks on a Road, and Mule Bone . Ruby Dee , a member of the Theatre Hall of Fame, starred on Broadway in the original productions of A Raisin in the Sun and Purlie Victorious , and was featured in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing . She is also an award-winning author and the producer of numerous television dramas.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Short Stories, Anthropology, African American, Folklore, Mythology

341 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1935

About the author

Novels, including Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and nonfiction writings of American folklorist Zora Neale Hurston give detailed accounts of African American life in the South.

In 1925, Hurston, one of the leaders of the literary renaissance, happening in Harlem, produced the short-lived literary magazine Fire!! alongside Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman shortly before she entered Barnard College. This literary movement developed into the Harlem renaissance.

Hurston applied her Barnard ethnographic training to document African American folklore in her critically acclaimed book Mules and Men alongside fiction Their Eyes Were Watching God . She also assembled a folk-based performance dance group that recreated her Southern tableau with one performance on Broadway.

People awarded a Guggenheim fellowship to Hurston to travel to Haiti and conduct research on conjure in 1937. Her significant work ably broke into the secret societies and exposed their use of drugs to create the Vodun trance, also a subject of study for fellow dancer-anthropologist Katherine Dunham, then at the University of Chicago.

In 1954, the Pittsburgh Courier assigned Hurston, unable to sell her fiction, to cover the small-town murder trial of Ruby McCollum, the prosperous black wife of the local lottery racketeer, who had killed a racist white doctor. Hurston also contributed to Woman in the Suwanee County Jail , a book by journalist and civil rights advocate William Bradford Huie.

Reviews

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Yeah, man. Love is a funny thing; love is a blossom. If you want yo' finger bit poke it at a possum.”

A 1935 ethnographic collection, it sounds dreadful. I liked it. I think this woman is great.

This is this the result of Zora Neale Hurston’s second field effort to collect African-American folklore. The first was a failure. She must have learned a lot. She captured not just stories, but voices that tell them.

Cultural anthropologist of her day didn’t like her participation within the storytelling, or maybe they resented how effective she was at collecting folklore. Her male peers in the Harlem Renaissance didn’t think she was bitter enough, disliked the laughter, and perpetuated white stereotypes. Well, she calls them “the Niggerati,” so there’s probably a lot of backstory that we don’t know.

By the mid-1950’s her writing was out of print, and she died impoverished. Praise from Alice Walker in the mid-1970s sparked a renewed interest. All of Hurston’s major works have been republished.

I’ll add the start of her introduction. You decide if want more.

I was glad when somebody told me, "You may go and collect Negro folklore."
In a way it would not be a new experience for me. When I pitched headforemost into the world I landed in in the crib of negroism. From the earliest rocking of my cradle, I had known about the capers Brer Rabbit is apt to cut and what Squinch Owl says from the house top. But it was fitting like a tight chemise. I couldn't see it for wearing it. It was only when I was off in college, away from my native surroundings that I could see myself like somebody else and stand off and look at my garment. Then I had to have the spyglass of Anthropology to look through at that.
Dr. Boas asked me where I wanted to work and I said, "Florida," and gave, as my big reason, that "Florida is a place that draws people, white people from all the world, and Negroes from every Southern state surely and some from the North and West." So I knew that it was possible for me to get cross section of the Negro South in the one state. And then I realized that I was new myself, so it looked sensible for me, choose familiar ground.
First place I aimed to stop to collect material was Eatonville, Florida.
And now, I'm going to tell you why I decided to go to my native village first. I didn't go back there so that the home could make admiration over me because I had been up North to college and come back with a diploma and a Chevrolet. I knew they were not going to pay either one of these I items too much mind. I was just Lucy Hurston's daughter, Zora and even if I had, to use one of our down home expressions, had a Kaiser baby, and that's something that hasn't been done in this Country yet, I'd still be just Zora to the neighbors. If I had exalted myself to impress the town, somebody would have sent me word in a matchbox that I had been up North there and had rubbed the hair off of my head against some college wall, and then come back there with a lot of form and fashion and outside show to the world. But they'd stand flatfooted and tell me that they didn't have me, neither my sham-polish, to study 'bout. And that would have been that.
I hurried back to Eatonville because I knew that the town was full of material and that I could get it without hurt, harm or danger. As early as I could remember it was the habit of the men folks particularly to gather on the store porch of evenings and swap stories. Even the women folks would stop and break a breath with them at times. As a child when I was sent down to Joe Clarke's store, I'd drag out my leaving as long as possible in order to hear more.
Folklore is not as easy to collect as it sounds. The best source is where there are the least outside influences and these people, being usually underprivileged, are the shyest. They are most reluctant at times to reveal that which the soul lives by. And the Negro, in spite of his open faced laughter, his seeming acquiescence, is particularly evasive. You see we are a polite people and we do not say to our questioner, "Get out of here!" We smile and tell him or her something that satisfies the white person because, knowing so little about us, he doesn't know what he is missing. The Indian resists curiosity by a stony silence. The Negro offers a feather bed resistance, that is, we let the probe enter, but it never comes out. It gets smothered under a lot of laughter and pleasantries.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/19...
https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/eng210...

[Julie G · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're wanting to read something by the fabulous Zora Neale Hurston, go read her famous novel, THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD, or her controversial memoir, DUST TRACKS ON A ROAD, and leave this one be.

Yes, this is an unusual collection of some anthropological merit, but, overall, this reporting of "Negro folk-lore," published in 1935, feels unfocused and redundant to me.

As far as I'm concerned, this non-fiction offering of Ms. Hurston's can be accused of having not enough Zora Neale Hurston and too many local Black men standing around telling stories that start with: "John sho was a smart nigger." And, yes, that is the point of this book. . . it is a collection of "Negro folk-lore," but I was so much more interested in the sophisticated Ms. Hurston and what she was doing in her Chevrolet, and far less interested in the big whoppers the men were telling each other in front of the general store.

. . . the wheels of the Chevvie split Orlando wide open--headed southwest for corn likker and song.

Since I have been immersed in the 1930s for a year now, I can tell you with a certain amount of confidence that women were, essentially, background props for men. . . walking vaginas, if you will, and the magnifying glass seemed to be, always, on the men. Knowing that, I understand that Ms. Hurston probably felt her story couldn't even SELL if it featured women and their stories (though THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD put everyone in their place, didn't it, Zora?!).

I felt grumpy every time my one little visit with Ms. Hurston would end, prematurely, and return to featuring the nonsense of the lying men in front of the store. I think, overall, I'm supremely burned out on the lies of men.

However, I did find out these two fascinating tidbits about women, from Ms. Hurston:

Negro women are punished in these parts (Florida) for killing men, but only if they exceed the quota. I don't remember what the quota is. Perhaps I did hear but forgot. One women had killed five when I left that turpentine still where she lived. The sheriff was thinking of calling on her and scolding her severely.

Wait, what?! The lives of Black men were so devalued by white law enforcement in 1930s Florida that Black women could kill up to 5 of them, before being "severely scolded" by the police?? Whoa! There is a story, here, folks, and I want to learn more about this, if anyone has a recommendation.

And I'd like to end with an observation by "Mah Honey," speaking of a cantankerous woman named "Good Bread" (both women were like 10 times more interesting than almost all of the men featured). Mah Honey says of Good Bread: "She always pickin' fights and gittin beat. Dat 'oman hates peace and agreement."

I found this an interesting observation. How many of us, especially those of us who are argumentative or violent, are creating issues with others because we have convinced ourselves that we "hate peace and agreement?" And, if we do "hate peace and agreement," what does that say about us?

(I'm sorry for the 3 stars, Zora, but I wanted this book to be more about you!)

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mules and Men should be read right along side Joseph Campbell's work. I was drawn more to the anthropological aspect of the book, more so than the literary merits (which it has lots of). Most people forget that Zora Neale Hurston was an Anthropologist who completed extensive fieldwork. In all of her works, anthropology plays an essential role. The use and importance of language is a reoccurring theme of hers, and in Mules and Men it is given equal examination along side African-American mythology.
The brilliance of this work is Ms. Hurston’s own mythology as she inserts herself into her anthropological findings. To study a culture or peoples from afar, or as an outsider, has always brought into question the validity, or “truths”, of the outcomes/findings. What is most interesting about Hurston’s insertion is that she makes no “bones” about the lies and mythology she puts forth. There is a thin line between truth and lies - we call it mythology. By placing herself into the work, she literally personifies it. Her approach also dips its toes into philosophy.
The stories she collects, as well as the hoodoo section, are recognizable for its influence in African-American film, literature and music. However, a lot the myths are not contained to African-American culture. The trickster is found in a number of well-known characters, Bugs Bunny, the famous of all. After reading Mules and Men, I’d love to do some extensive research on the origins of Bugs Bunny.
For those of you drawn to anthropology, mythology, folklore and the works of Joseph Campbell, Zora Neale Husrton’s Mules and Men is a must read.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a short story collection from the ingenious author Zora Neale Hurston. I would suggest reading Their Eyes Were Watching God and if you enjoy the style, dive deeply and fearlessly into her universe with Mules and Men.

[♥Milica♥ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This wasn't the Zora Neale Hurston book that I planned to start with, but I'm glad I did. It was a perfect listen and it really makes me want to listen to her other books on audio too. But I already have Their Eyes Were Watching God translated to my language so I'll probably listen to it in English whenever I reread it.

I highly, HIGHLY recommend you listen to this, because it's so fun, and interesting, the narrator captured the spirit of Zora and the storytellers wonderfully.

But the audiobook seems a bit shorter than the book though, judging by the length? Maybe there's a longer version out there somewhere. I'll have to look for it.

4.5

[Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

"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 a span of 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 and it 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 in order to write on this topic. She essentially became a hoodoo doctor herself in order to do this research.

As a whole, I enjoyed reading this collection. I enjoyed the hoodoo section more than the folktales. However, I like the way 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 Appendix of the book 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.

[Deb · Rating 5 out of 5]

First off, I didn't read this book but listened to it on an audiobook version. This is a collection of black American folk lore. It is a a group of oral stories that were passed on to and written down by author Zora Neale Hurston (known for Their Eyes Were Watching God). Some of these stories were told back in the days of slavery and ones that Zora heard as a child. This was a project that Ms Hurston started back in the 1930s when she had returned to her hometown of Eatonville, Florida.

What a wonderful time I had listening to these imaginative stories told by the talented Ruby Dee. I felt like I was a little kid again, sitting on the floor, listening to a storyteller weaving some fantastical tales laced with humor, wisdom and culture. This is definitely one "book" that should be listened to and not just read. I can't say enough about Ruby Dee's reading of these stories. A true treasure that hasn't gotten enough attention.

[robin friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hurston's Mules And Men

I read Zora Neale Hurston's novel "Their Eyes are Watching God" and wanted to read more. Hurston (1891 -- 1960) had studied anthropology at Barnard with one of the founders of modern anthropology, Franz Boas. With Boas' encouragement and funding from a private source, Hurston travelled South to collect African-American folklore. Her first stop was Eatonville, Florida, an all-black community where Hurston had spent much of her childhood. She then went South to Polk County, Florida and its sawmills and the Everglades. She went further South to Pierce and Lakeland gathering folk materials before heading to New Orleans to study Hoodoo. In 1927, she rented a small house in Eau Gallie, near Melbourne, Florida where she organized her extensive notes. Her book, "Mules and Men" was published in 1935.

"Mules and Men" is an outstanding source of information about the folk-tales, called "lies", of rural Southern African-Americans. (Florida was a gathering place for African-Americans throughout the South because of the economic opportunities it offered.) She visited old friends in Eatonville, and won the confidence of people in the other communities she visited. The tales include animal stories ("why dogs and cats are enemies", "how the snake got poison," for example) stories of pre-civil war days involving a slave named "Jack" and his master, stories of the battle between the sexes, contests between "Jack" and the devil, bragging contests, and much else. Hurston also collected songs and lyrics, including "John Henry", sermons, and hoodoo formulas while in New Orleans.

But this book is much more than a compilation of folk materials. Hurston brings her material to life by bringing the story-tellers and the communities she visited to life. She writes with deep and obvious affection for the rural African-American communities of the South in the mid-1920s. Hurston's folk-tales are embedded in a fascinating story of their own as she introduces the reader to the small towns, the parties, the sawmills, the jooks, and the life of her story tellers. One of the characters that Hurston befriends is a woman named Big Sweet who lives with a man named Joe. Joe cheats on Big Sweet, and Big Sweet puts Joe right in no uncertain terms. Big Sweet and her enemy, a woman named Lucy, draw knives with potentially fatal consequences in a fight in a jook that involves Zora. Big Sweet is a strong and convincingly drawn character in her own right. The characters and communities in the book were for me even more convincing that the stories.

The first part of Mules and Men describes Hurston's collecting of folk tales, while the second, shorter part discusses her experiences with Hoodoo doctors in New Orleans. Hoodoo played a large role in the lives of some African-Americans. I was reminded of Memphis Minnie's blues song "Hoodoo Lady" and of Muddy Waters' "I got my mojo working". The founder of Hoodoo was a woman named Marie Leveau. Hurston describes how she gained the confidence of several Hoodoo doctors in New Orleans, received initiation from them, and was in one case asked to stay on as a successor practitioner. Hurston relays Hoodoo spells used to kill an enemy, to make an unwanted person leave town, to get a lover or to get rid of an unwanted lover, and to bring help to those in jail. She recounts the stories of these conjures, of the Hoodoo doctors, and their clients with a great deal of seriousness. I found this section of the book fascinating but troubling and different from the folk-tales and people discussed in the first part of the book.

The book is written almost entirely in dialect, but I found it easy to follow as the book progressed. Hurston wrote this book to preserve an important part of African-American culture in the United States and to express her commitment to and love for this culture. She believed this culture had its own strengths and could develop its own course and destiny internally. This is a fascinating, moving book and a thought-provoking picture of one form of the African-American experience in the United States.

Robin Friedman

[Bloodorange · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to read it for a fix of Zora Neale Hurston, and it wasn't the best choice I could make.

Zora's voice is largely absent from the book. After two chapters, the tales became just meh. Sorry. And the first part of the book (58%, to be precise) is that: a minimalistic narrative frame of some documentary value, but not going _too_ much into details of peoples' day-to-day lives, serving as a background for folk tales. There were some stunning moments, though:

Negro women _are_ punished in these parts for killing men, but only if they exceed the quota. I don't remember what the quota is. Perhaps I did hear but I forgot. One woman had killed five when I left that turpentine still where she lived. The sheriff was thinking of calling on her and scolding her severely.

I can only say that my ability to read Southern African-American vernacular Hurston uses for the tales solidified.

The second part (21%) concerns her initiations as a hoodoo priestess with different 'doctors' and hoodoo rituals, and even these chapters were - I don't believe I'm saying this - just that. Pretty dry material. Work material. This is a rare moment where you can see Zora immortalizing her vision of herself:

"I see her conquering and accomplishing with the lightning and making her road with thunder. She shall be called the Rain-Bringer."
... With ceremony Turner painted the lightning symbol down my back ... This was to be my sign forever. The Great One was to speak to me in storms."

The last part (21%) consists of glossary, songs, a list of "paraphernalia of conjure" and descriptions of rituals. I'd say this book may be of interest to people who either study black folklore or hoodoo/ voodoo. If you want to cure gonorrhea or rent a house; kill someone or simply give him 'running feet', this is the book for you. If you're a Hurston fan, but not strongly interested in folklore or early 20th century black culture, choose another one.

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Belief in magic is older than writing. So nobody knows how it started.”

I love the idea of this book. And many of the things I read in here will stay with me. But that in-between part--the actual reading of it--was not very fun.

Zora Neale Hurston has such a gift for storytelling. In the beginning I was all excited about reading this because she told of driving around Florida in her car, sort of gathering up folks with stories to tell. The problem was, she handed the storytelling over to them, and their stories kind of fell flat for me. Page after page, I was missing Zora’s voice.

This is full of fascinating folklore though, especially the part that details her experiences studying under a number of hoodoo doctors, complete with rituals and spells. Some of them were nasty—death and animal parts and “goofer dust” (dust from graves).

Here’s a tame one: A woman went to Zora wanting to get her mother-in-law out of her house. Zora’s remedy was to core out an onion, write the lady’s name on five little pieces of paper and stuff them in the middle of the onion. Then wait for the lady to leave the house, and when she does, roll the onion behind her after she crossed the doorway. That was supposed to get her out of there within a few weeks. I figured there might be someone out there who could maybe use that information :-)

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

[Lois · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an invaluable gift to the Black Diaspora, most especially those from North America.
Bless her, what a treasure and gift was Zora Neale Hurston

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't imagine that the printed book can beat the audio. This was a perfect listening experience. Highly recommend. If you are a fan of Jack's Tales being read to you then this would be a perfect fit.

[Jeanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

The brother in black puts a laugh in every vacant place in his mind. His laugh has a hundred meanings. It may mean amusement, anger, grief, bewilderment, chagrin, curiosity, simple pleasure or any other of the known or undefined emotions. (p. 62)

Mules and Men is a collection of black stories and hoodoo (voodoo), published by Zora Neale Hurston in 1935. To collect such stories, you don't just Google your question; you need to listen carefully. You need to become an accepted member of the group.

[But,] folklore is not as easy to collect as it sounds. The best source is where there are the least outside influences and these people, being usually under-privileged, are the shyest. They are most reluctant at times to reveal that which the soul lives by. And the Negro, in spite of his open-faced laughter, his seeming acquiescence, is particularly evasive. You see we are a polite people and we do not say to our questioner, “Get out of here!” We smile and tell him or her something that satisfies the white person because, knowing so little about us, he doesn’t know what he is missing. (p. 2)

But just because she was black doesn't that gathering these stories was a piece of cake. Hurston initially betrayed herself as an outsider because she had worn a $12.74 dress from Macy's rather than the $1.98 mail-order dresses, bungalow aprons, and paper bags that the other women wore.

Changing how she dressed, how she talked, how she presented herself helped people talk to her, but how does being a participant observer change what is observed? Are these the stories they would have told if she wasn't there?

There is a playfulness to Hurston's stories, which belies their seriousness. One person tells a story and another ups the ante. I think of how a people gets around the oppression in their lives. They make and hang quilts to signal safety (or danger); they use language – vocabulary, word play, stories and story telling – to comfort, to reframe the current reality, to present alternate realities.

While the Blacks in these stories are wise and canny and foolish, the Whites are mostly foolish. From one story:

So John knelt down. “O Lord, here Ah am at de foot of de persimmon tree. If you’re gointer destroy Old Massa tonight, with his wife and chillun and everything he got, lemme see it lightnin’.”

Jack up the tree, struck a match. Ole Massa caught hold of John and said: “John, don’t pray no more.”

John said: “Oh yes, turn me loose so Ah can pray. O Lord, here Ah am tonight callin’ on Thee and Thee alone. If you are gointer destroy Ole Massa tonight, his wife and chillun and all he got, Ah want to see it lightnin’ again.”

Jack struck another match and Ole Massa started to run. He give John his freedom and a heap of land and stock. He run so fast that it took a express train running at the rate of ninety miles an hour and six months to bring him back, and that’s how come niggers got they freedom today. (pp. 83-84).

Hurston offers little analysis to these stories, as that would steal the life from them. Mules and Men is self-serve meaning-making.

"They all got a hidden meanin’, jus’ like de Bible. Everybody can’t understand what they mean. Most people is thin-brained. They’s born wid they feet under de moon. Some folks is born wid they feet on de sun and they kin seek out de inside meanin’ of words.” (p. 125)

[Rincey]

Not going to rate this one because I could tell from the jump that this wasn't quite the book I was expecting going into it. I saw someone else say that this book belongs Joseph Campbell's work and I agree! But I also don't enjoy reading Joseph Campbell 😅

Watch me discuss this book more here: https://youtu.be/Ml-bzj0Fdzw😅

[Nichole · Rating 5 out of 5]

The following passage is taken from the blurb on the 2008 Harperperennial paperback edition. This blurb says it all:

"...a treasury of black America's folklore as collected by a famous storyteller and anthropologist who grew up hearing the songs and sermons, sayings and tall tales that have formed an oral history of the South since the time of slavery. Returning to her hometown of Eatonville, Florida, to gather material, Zora Neale Hurston recalls "a hilarious night with a pinch of everything social mixed with the storytelling." Set intimately within the social context of black life, the stories, "big old lies," songs, Vodou customs, and superstitions recorded in these pages capture the imagination and bring back to life the humor and wisdom that is the unique heritage of African Americans."

This has been the month for me to revisit all things Zora Neale Hurston, and it's been great. For years, I didn't realize how much I had missed her writing, so when I selected Mules and Men to sit down with a couple of days ago, I was pleasantly surprised. Reading Hurston feels like being born again. I loved those chapters of folklore. I was stunned to find out that a few of those "lies" Hurston recorded were actually stories I had loved listening to as a little girl. What an experience - then and now.

Zora Neale Hurston was a jack of all literary trades: a prodigious folklorist and anthropologist, a highly-gifted novelist, a short-story writer, a reporter, even a playwright and poet. She was spunky; an adventurer who loved life; a woman who never let adversity block her path. Until the end of her life, she continued to write. Her kind of spirit is rare.

It was a joy to revisit her.

[Lee Foust · Rating 4 out of 5]

I assigned this blind for the lit course I'm teaching this semester, as an example of literature inspired by black American folklore. It turned out not only to be a great choice--having so many interesting things in common with so many of the other texts I chose, particularly Boccaccio's Decameron and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales--but also just to be a great read. I really enjoyed it.

I suppose it bears remarking that Hurston must have struggled a bit with the form the project of collecting black American folklore was going to take in its finished form as a book--either a scholarly collection of folktales, perhaps with some sort of commentary, or a more popular (that is to say a book aimed at a more general reading public), with a narrative frame text surrounding the folktales. She opted for the latter, ostensibly because she had two offers of publication for such a book and none for the more scholarly version, but seems to have worried that perhaps this publishable version would have alienated her anthropology prof. Franz Boas, who must have been key to framing her methodology in collecting the tales and probably helped her to finance the research period as well--which the text itself informs us was the money to live on and travel to Florida in a brand new car! She need not fear as even in its popular, publishable form, Boaz wrote her a brief but solid preface.

At any rate, scholar that I am, I think the frame story describing the personalities and interactions of the various story-tellers with Zora as well as each other while the tales are being told works both on a narrative level to keep us interested and entertained and also probably acts as a more profound commentary on the personalities and culture producing the folktales than any dry attempt at some more objective scientific framing would have. Win/win. This is a wonderful book full of entertaining stories that, like all narratives really, also shed light on the people, time period, and civilization from which they spawned.

--------------------------

Just taught this for a second time and my students were pretty lukewarm. Biggest complaint seems to be that the tales are too simple, mere anecdotes, so it didn't stand up to some of the more complex texts we read earlier in the course--Apuleius, 1,0001 Nights, Boccaccio, Chaucer, etc. Still, I love the form of the integration of tale and storytelling here even if I will agree the tales themselves are perhaps nearer one liners than a multi-layered novella.

[Demetria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ms. Zora Neale Hurston is my literary hero. That is all.

[Girish · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Mouths don't empty themselves unless ears are sympathetic and knowing.”

The narratives and stories of any culture tell you a lot more about the influences and values of the people. Got to know Ms.Hurston was an anthropologist and it shows in this collection of oral stories, tall lies, anecdotes and voodoo stories of the Black people of America.

The tone of the first part of the book is palyful with the author visiting her hometown and hanging out with her friends who are swapping stories. They compete and narrate stories that are funny, scary and in some ways explain their belief system. The slave angles are inevitable with many "Massa" stories told in the tone. The advantage of the audiobook is you hear it in the same slang as well!

The second half of the book on Voodoo stories were a little bit tough to handle. Not the stories themselves but the expectation from the reader to suspend beliefs. It still works since the author does not want you to judge them and understand what drives their faith.

An indulgent and revealing piece of writing.

[Aidan Giordano · Rating 5 out of 5]

magic is real. Zora Neale Hurston is a legend. RIP the cat she boiled alive though

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have never read a book like this. It is a collection of Black folktales, myths and also speaks about Hoodoo.

I felt like I was at my Uncle's table listening to him speak and explain things. He has long passed, but it reminded me of his heart and spirit. He was from Mississippi and would have experienced a bit of life similar to what the folk had throughout this collection.

I chuckled about the mole on the neck story 😂.

[Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the most unique books I have ever read. The first part of it is Hurston's collections of folklore from southern, rural African Americans in Florida and other places. She wrote them so beautifully in the vernacular of the people telling the stories that it feels like the reader is sitting right next to Hurston on the front porch of someone's home or at the Juke Joint. There are stories of survival, triumph and failure as people come together to live their lives in communities. Hurston also thoughtfully provided a glossary of terms, foot notes and thorough appendices so that she did not have to interrupt the flow of the language as it was naturally spoken.

The second part of the book was stories of Hurston's training as a "Hoodoo" (Voodoo) practitioner. It was absolutely fascinating as she detailed her initiations as well as the people coming in to request the doctor's assistance with problems s/he was experiencing. At the end, there is a catalogue of some of the ingredients that Hoodoo practitioners use to bring luck, love, end relationships, etc. It's pretty amazing.

[Kevin Mckinney · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is really probably a 3.5 for me, but you can't give half-stars here, so I'd rather overrate it than underrate it. Some of the stories in here are genuinely hilarious and very fun to read and overall this was a great introduction to some themes in African American folklore. I'd like to try to find a book that's a bit more recent and that maybe has a bit more analysis because a lot of Mules and Men is just ZNH driving around Florida and transcribing people's stories without much commentary on the content of the tales, so there were moments where it would've been fun to hear someone smarter than me try to help the reader interpret some of these tales. Of course, I think this is kind of the point of all the stories in the first place- they're very much tales from and about a specific people that help create internal solidarity and differentiate those who get it and those who don't.

[Arlene♡ · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0 Stars. Since this was an abridge version of the book, which I didn't know that I had, I wasn't sure if i would have liked it. There was one tale, or "lie" as it is said to be in the book that I felt was cut off, maybe it was just bad editing. But other than that, this was a pleasure to listen to. It is told from Zora's POV and recalls tales, or lies as they are called, that she has heard from her childhood told by the people of her hometown. I think some of them are ridiculous, like the one about how black folks became black, SPOILER >> it was all a misunderstanding lol. I enjoyed this. It was a quick listen, about 3 hours.

[Lupita Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

I completely loved the book. There is something really beautiful about knowing that she went out and collected these book of lies that have out lived her and will hopefully outlive us. This is what makes life beautiful. Reading stories from all walks of life and different perspectives. I truly enjoyed this book. So true and very refreshing. I totally can't wait to re-read "Their eyes were watching God".

[Melanie Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston can be a hilarious read at times, all while giving insight into 1930s Floridian black communities in the swamps. Yet, this collection can struggle because it ultimately doesn’t know how to be what it wants to be.

Check out my full review at Grab the Lapels.

[Illiterate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pioneering folklore/ethnography. But little analysis.

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was difficult for me to distinguish which of the stories were already established, and which ones were just BS'd on the spot by the people she was talking to. Not that I was reading this for any academic purposes.

It was very disjointed, and kind of all over the place. There were some fun and memorable parts, but I think I'm going to remember it more as George MacDonald's Phantastes, than Tolkien's Lord of the Rings - more of a foundational mythopoeic text than some sort of cohesive narrative.

Out of all of us who read it, I think I was the only one who enjoyed the Hoodoo section more than the Folklore section. Maybe that's because of the time I spent in Haiti as a very young child, going to sleep with the "Witch Doctor's" drums beating every night just outside our compound. The significance of the Red and Blue. Burning the snakes. Burning the living owl in the tree. Sea urchins and zombies. Chants and dances and spitting on the ground. And kept inside (being far too young) for Rah Rah.

As has been the case of late, I wish I would have reviewed this directly after reading, rather than letting a month pass. But I've read enough books now, that I won't have time to even return to the reviews of the books I loved.

[K2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a GoodRead! Unaware I was reading an abridged version of this read it still was a GoodRead, I just wonder what was taking out, the reason I normally do not read abridged books.

[Tyler Pry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the first half with its focus on African American folk tales, but did not like the second half as much with its focus on voodoo.