Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance by Zora Neale Hurston: A review in 100 words

This extraordinary collection of 21 short stories, including eight of Zora Neale Hurston’s “lost” tales, highlights the genius that cemented Hurston’s place among the top artists of the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston’s command of vernacular adds oomph to her vivid portraits of mean men, gutsy women, and fraught families, which she could sketch in a sentence. Jealousy and love are strong components of her emotional palette, not the least in the heart-wrenching “Under the Bridge.” The multiplicity of relationships in this volume exist without the slightest nod to the “white gaze” – the literary concept Toni Morrison later defined and avidly rejected.