Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Susan Edwards Meisenhelder

Critical Essay by Susan Edwards Meisenhelder

SOURCE: Meisenhelder, Susan Edwards. “‘Fractious’ Mules and Covert Resistance in Mules and Men.” In Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Race and Gender in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston, pp. 14-35. Tuscaloosa, Ala.: The University of Alabama Press, 1999.

In the following essay, Meisenhelder analyzes the narrative techniques that Hurston utilizes to explore racial and sexual issues in Mules and Men.

In an oft-quoted passage from her introduction to Mules and Men, Hurston stresses the difference between her childhood unreflective immersion in black folklife and her later understanding of it:

When I pitched headforemost into the world I landed 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 the Squinch Owl says from the house top. But it was fitting me like a tight chemise. I couldn't see it for...
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