Mule Bone

by Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes

Book Overview

In 1930, two giants of African American literature joined forces to create a lively, insightful, often wildly farcical look inside a rural Southern black community-the three-act play Mule Bone. In... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060968850
• ISBN13: 9780060968854
• Release Date: April 2000
• Publisher: Harpperen
• Length: 282 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Dramatizing Folklore

We are fortunate that this play was finally produced well over 50 years after it was written. Hurston and Hughes wrote an interesting play that needs a bit of fine tuning in order to be a truly great play. If they had been able to stage this production in the 1930s, the play could have really changed the ways that African-American culture is expressed through musical comedy. One of their great contributions is their use of actual stories and traditional songs from African-American folklore in this play, and the collective ear of Hurston and Hughes in presenting the voices of black people really creates an authentic sound to the dialogue. Unfortunately, disputes between Hurston and Hughes kept them from staging the play, an ironic development since the play is a satiric look at factionalism within a small community. With historical hindsight, this play adds to our understanding of the Harlem Renaissance and the work of two great writers. It's also very much worth reading in relation to Hurston's other writing, especially _Mules and Men_.