Tales of the Harlem Renaissance

“FOLKLORE,” ZORA NEALE HURSTON wrote in an essay, “is the boiled-down juice of human living.” It was this deep interest in the lives and stories of the black community that led Hurston, who grew up in Eatonville, Fla., to spend years traveling across the South and the Caribbean as an anthropologist and ethnographer. But long before she published her renowned 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston was exploring the diversity of the black American experience in her short stories, most of which eluded critical attention during her lifetime.

A new collection, aims to correct that, bringing together 21 of Hurston’s short stories in a single volume for the first time—eight of which are newly recovered from obscure periodicals and archives,