Activity time: 30 minutes
Materials for Activity
- Stories to read aloud, chosen from options in Preparation for Activity
- Optional: Computer, with speakers if available, with Internet connection
Preparation for Activity
Purchase folk tale books or borrow from a library, choosing one of these:
- Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folk-tales from the Gulf States, collected by Zora Neale Hurston (New York: Harper Perennial, 2002)
- Mules and Men, collected by Zora Neale Hurston (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008)
- Selection of children's books based on the stories collected by Hurston. Possibilities include:
- What's the Hurry, Fox? and Other Animal Stories
- The Six Fools
- The Three Witches
- Lies and Other Tall Tales
- The Skull Talks Back
- Select two or three stories to share with the group. Practice reading them aloud. Alternatively, invite a participant to prepare to read the stories.
- Optional: Listen to the audio clip (6:25) of Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis reading from Hurston's Every Tongue Got to Confess, on the Zora Neale Hurston website. Hurston tells how she came to collect African American folklore and its role in the community. Set up the computer, and speakers if you have them, so you can share the clip.
Description of Activity
Along with being a novelist, Zora Neale Hurston was a formally trained anthropologist. As part of her Ph.D. work at Columbia University, she collected folk tales and African American wisdom had been passed from generation to generation. These tales, which date back to the time of slavery, illustrate an ethical system that lifts up survival, identity, and dignity of the marginalized.
Read aloud the story(ies) you have chosen. Follow each story with a discussion of these questions:
- What wisdom does this tale transmit?
- How does the wisdom in this tale affirm life, dignity, and identity for those who are powerless?
- How does it demonstrate an ethic of resistance?
- What strikes you about this story, when you read it as an example of ethics from the margins?