Zora Neal Hurston Jump at the Sun 2008
Distributed by California Newsreel, Order Dept., PO Box 2284, South Burlington, VT 05407; 877-811-7495 (toll free)
Produced by Bay Bottom News and American Masters, Kristy Anderson
Directed by Sam Pollard
DVD, color, b&w, 84 min.
Jr. High - Adult
African American Studies, Anthropology, Ethnomusicology, Folklore, Literature, Music, Women's Studies
Date Entered: 01/07/2009
Reviewed by Monique Threatt, Indiana University, Herman B Wells Library, Bloomington, INDirector Sam Pollard’s engrossing and enlightening feature-length documentary showcases the awe-inspiring biography of one of the most celebrated seminal writers of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960).
Raised in the all-black town of Eatonville, Florida, Hurston is encouraged by her mother to be self-confident, independent, assured in her actions, and to believe she can accomplish anything in life if she keeps her eyes on the prize and “jump at da sun,” a southern vernacular metaphor used to encourage one to reach for the stars. In Eatonville, she grows up with a sense of belonging and community and dismisses the cancerous limbs of Jim Crow. Hurston never allows institutional racism to define her because of her race and gender. Later in life, during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, she would verbally oppose legislated integration much to the dismay of African Americans. In her words, she felt that she was not tragically colored…but rather too busy sharpening her oyster knife. She did not let societal restrictions dictate her ability to succeed. In her opinion, it was the other person’s loss to exclude her from their business, company, and conversation.
Unfortunately, Hurston’s mother dies when she is 13 and the film points out that up until the age of 28, she works at various domestic-related jobs. By 1917, Hurston is accepted to attend Howard University in Washington, D.C. It is unclear in the film if she receives a scholarship to attend Howard, or is there at the graces of a kind patron. It is also unclear if Hurston earns a degree at Howard before moving to New York in 1925 to immerse herself in the Harlem Renaissance as well as to attend, and become the first black graduate of Barnard College. At Barnard, she forms a relationship with anthropologist Franz Boaz which leads to an anthropological career to document folklore in the rural south, and her hometown of Eatonville. Her relationship with Boaz is just one of many important relationships Hurston forms with leading scholars, ethnomusicologists and literary figures of the day. People such as Alain Lock, Alan Lomax, Fannie Hurst, and Langston Hughes all help to shape Hurston’s role as a pioneer in anthropology, folklore, ethnomusicology, and literature.
Self-dubbed the Queen of the Niggerati, Hurston manages to appeal to both black and white readers, although her use of the African American vernacular often put her at odds with the black elite of the day. Author of the autobiography, Dust Tracks on the Road (1942), and several novels, Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. labels her most famous work, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), as a “classic because of its use of black vernacular immerses readers in the consciousness of an oppressed people, exuberantly expressing their freedom, creativity, and individual worth through everyday speech.”
The strength of this documentary is that it visually brings to light a story about an amazing and courageous woman who contributed so much to American folklore and literature. Her contributions are forever intricately linked to the multifaceted fields she pursued during her short 69 years. It’s sad to think that her contributions to American history might have slipped into obscurity had it not been for novelists like Alice Walker and Maya Angelou who did much to revive Hurston’s name, and to lobby publishers to reprint Hurston’s out-of-print novels. The other great strengths of this film is that it interweaves unique archival footage, most of it preserved and shot by Hurston herself, to document a slice of American folklore, history, music, and religion from quintessential rural mid-20th century southern African American communities. One can only imagine what life must have been like for a black woman travelling to and from a segregated South during this era.
If there are any weaknesses in the film, it may lie in omitting in-depth information about Hurston’s personal life, sexuality, or if she encountered any major confrontations with segregationists during her travels to the South.
Researched over a period of 18 years, the film does an amazing job to include Hurston biographers and talking heads such as Emily Bernard, Valerie Boyd, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Robert Hemengway, Tiffany Patterson, Cheryl Wall, and Dorothy West. Also included is a dramatized 1943 radio interview between Hurston and American radio interview host Mary Margaret McBride, as well as numerous clips of archival sights and sounds never seen by the masses.
Kudos to Bay Bottom News and American Masters for their professional production, and for bringing to light an amazing and long overdue story of a legendary icon and storyteller of the Harlem Renaissance and beyond.
I highly recommend this film for academic, public, and school libraries. The documentary can be used to supplement American and African American studies, anthropology, folklore/ethnomusicology, literature and women’s studies.