ETC marks Women's History Month with Zora Neale Hurston program

February 28, 2015 11:00 pm • Last Updated: February 27, 2015 5:09 pm

By AMY J. BARRY, Special to The Day

Zora Neale Hurston's niece, Lucy Ann Hurston, will read one of her aunt's works at the ETC celebration.

On March 7, the First United Methodist Church in Mystic will come alive with an ensemble of voices reading the literary works of Zora Neale Hurston.

Considered among the most important and influential modern American writers, Hurston is known for her works about the culture and folk traditions of southern African Americans.

Hurston grew up in the rural black community of Eatonville, Fla., moved to New York City to attend Barnard University, and went on to become a central figure during the Harlem Renaissance.

In conjunction with Women's History Month, Emerson Theatre Collaborative (ETC) is celebrating the life of the groundbreaking novelist, essayist, journalist, playwright and anthropologist.

Although an acclaimed writer in her time, Hurston fell into obscurity after her death in 1960, until about 20 years ago when novelist Alice Walker, along with Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison, who referred to Hurston as their "literary foremother," helped to resurrect her. Today, Hurston's 1937 literary masterpiece, "Their Eyes Were Watching God," is required reading in many high schools and colleges.

Reading Hurston's works at the event will be her three nieces, Lucy Anne Hurston, Georgette Hurston, and Valerie Hurston Bilodeau, along with ETC board president and actress Camilla Ross, poets Maya Sheppard and Rhonda Ward, student Ciara Rollins, ETC advisory board member and playwright Lisa Giordano, creative strategy consultant Leslie Singer, and actor Patrick Dicesare. Hurston's nephew, Edward Hurston, a musician who has played at Harlem's Apollo Theater, will be performing on blues harmonica.

HOW THE EVENT CAME ABOUT

ETC's celebration of Zora Neale Hurston's writings came about three years ago when New London resident Lisa Giordano, who is writing a play about the literary figure, was researching Hurston's life.

"I thought, why not have a reading of her work as well?" Giordano says. "I didn't know of any other (celebration) of her work in the Northeast - the only one I knew of was in Florida."

While reading a book about Hurston by her niece Lucy Anne Hurston, ("Speak So You Can Speak Again: The Life of Zora Neal Hurston") Giordano discovered that the author taught at Manchester Community College and that her brothers and sisters also lived in Connecticut. And so Giordano invited them all to participate in the reading/celebration.

Every year Giordano asks people in the local community to volunteer to read a selection from one of Hurston's works, which vary from year to year.

"We always serve gingerbread because Zora Neale Hurston always served gingerbread and buttermilk during the Harlem Renaissance," Giordano says, "although we'll forego the buttermilk and have coffee and tea."

The reason this is such a good program to have in honor of Women's History Month, says Giordano, is that "Zora Neale Hurston was a person who sang her own song and paved her own path. She was a wonderful role model for women. According to her biographer Valerie Boyd, she made it possible for black women in particular to write about their interior lives and have their work taken seriously."

INFLUENCING THE NEXT GENERATION

Lucy Anne Hurston was only 3 years old when her aunt Zora died, but she says her aunt played a huge role in the path her life would take. Today she is a professor of sociology and chair of the department of sociology and sign language at Manchester Community College.

Lucy Anne Hurston's family moved from Brooklyn, N.Y., to Bristol in 1969. She remembers her father regaling her with tales of his big sister for more than 30 years. When Lucy Anne was 9 years old, she found several boxes of her aunt's books in the attic. Before her 10th birthday, she had read them all, her favorite being "Their Eyes Were Watching God."

"She became the motivation for me to do things that everyone told me I couldn't do," Lucy Anne Hurston says. "Against such odds for the era she lived in, she acquired so many

experiences."

Lucy Anne Hurston says people were always "pulling the no card on me" in whatever she wanted to do because she was a woman.

"Those weren't their words, but those were their actions," she says. "In the insurance industry it was all button-down, white-shirt men in cubicles. I became a data processing manager, but clearly they weren't going to let me get any further.

"I became invincible because of Zora. At 31 I started college and now I'm the department chair. The work I do is very closely aligned with the type of work Zora did - qualitative feminist sociology and oral histories and ethnography."

Lucy Anne Hurston believes her aunt broke through so many boundaries for her time because "she had the nerve and the drive and this burning desire to know and to share. She was an ambassador for her race - out of ignorance that people didn't appreciate the uniqueness and beauty of black life."

She adds, "Zora had the double jeopardy thing of being black, a woman, and southern, trying to make it in the north where she was an outsider."

Lucy Anne Hurston believes it's important to celebrate her aunt's life, particularly during Women's History Month, because, "We need to look at all the women who have struggled and overcome. And we also need to look at the women who struggled, attempted and failed because they did kick the can down the road a little bit. Their efforts shouldn't be forgotten."

Edward Hurston, Zora's nephew, takes a special pride in his relationship with his aunt and cites a timeless quality to her work.

"To claim Zora Neale Hurston is to claim a piece of the past, present and future. Her blood runs wild through my veins. She jumped at the sun as I reach to the stars. She left her mark on this planet with her spoken and written words. I hope one day to do a fraction of the same with my lyrics and bent notes from the brass reeds of my harmonica. To claim Zora is to claim greatness and everlasting life. She truly will never die."

Lucy Anne Hurston is pleased about the upcoming ETC celebration.

"I congratulate the passion with which these women do their work," she says. "I've seen the crowd swell each year like a rash everybody's getting. People come back and bring friends with them. We form relationships. It's wonderful."