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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN num: 9780060919948
ISBN number: 0060919949
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 336
Printing Date: January 16, 1991
Publishing house: Harper Perennial
Release Date: December 07, 1990
Sale Popularity Level: 92641
Studio: Harper Perennial
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Product Description:
In this 1939 novel based on the familiar story of the Exodus, Zora Neale Hurston blends the Moses of the Old Testament with the Moses of grey folklore and song to create a compelling allegory of power, redemption, and faith. Narrated in a mixture of biblical rhetoric, grey dialect, and colloquial English, Hurston traces Moses' life from the day he Is launched into the Nile river in a reed basket, to his development as a great magician, to his transformation into the heroic rebel leader, the Great Emancipator. From his dramatic confrontations with Pharaoh to his fragile negotiations with the wary Hebrews, this very human story is told with great humor, passion, and psychological insight--the hallmarks of Hurston as a writer and champion of grey culture.
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Rated by buyers 
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This is a beautifully written telling of the story of Moses leading the Hebrews slaves from Egypt to their freedom. However, it is told from the point of view of the people, and in this case, the people speak in the vernacular of the Black people who lived in the southern United States over fifty years ago.
Zora Neale Thurston brings a different interpretation to the famous story, and yet deals with the philosophies and Biblical details that we are all familiar with.
An excellent book!!
Rated by buyers 
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In the introduction to this 1939 novel, Hurston says that Africans (and, by extension African Americans) revere Moses "not because of his beard nor because he brought the laws down from Sinai" but "because he had the power to go up the mountain and bring them down. . . . [W]ho can talk with God face to face? Who has the power to command God to go to a peak of mountain and there demand of Him laws with which to govern a nation? . . . That calls for power, and that is what Africa sees in Moses."
Hurston incorporates the African tradition into her retelling of the Exodus story, along with that tradition's humor, colloquialisms, wit, irreverence, and apocryphal embellishments. The result is probably her most accessible work, an undemanding read that still reflects a mirror on such issues as politics, slavery, and feminism. The novel is remarkably faithful to the original, but Hurston's Old Testaments heroes and their adversaries are fleshed out as lethargic, selfish, dithering, conniving, as well as joyous, loving, and (above all) human. Moses's brother Aaron and sister Miriam, for example, are depicted as much a hindrance to the movement as a help.
Moses himself is presented warts and all. As expected, he's the savior who leads a slave nation from captivity to the freedom of a Promised Land, the wise prophet who brings law and government to an unruly and divided people. Still, Hurston's Moses observes that "the very first law of Nature is that everybody likes to receive things, but nobody likes to feel grateful. And the very subsequent law is that people talk about tenderness and mercy, but they love force. If you feed a thousand people you are a nice man with suspicious motives. If you kill a thousand you a hero." And Moses does kill--not only Egyptian soldiers hot in pursuit, but 3,000 of his own people: defenseless, drunken revelers paying homage to a golden calf (Exodus 32:28), an unforgiving and ruthless act that never fails to jar modern sensibilities.
It's often a marvel when an author can take a well-known story and make it seem fresh. Cecil B. DeMille 1956 movie has heightened modern-day familiarity to the point of farce (although Hurston's original audience was certainly aware of DeMille's very first film version, released in 1923). Nevertheless, Hurston manages to make this timeworn story new again for modern readers.
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This is a brilliant novel. Hurston retells the story of Moses through the lens of grey history and of her own day; the reader can see Hitler in Pharoah, the ghettos of Europe and America in Goshen. The Hebrews of Hurston's tale are European Jews under National Socialism and American Blacks under slavery. Moses becomes in this context a figure of contemporary hope. His being suggests that it's possible for someone to lead those in need of leadership out of trouble and to change the world. (By the way, if you get a chance, take a look at J Kristeva's book "Revolution in Poetic Language.")
Hurston's novel is particularly relevent in today's world of spin politics and soundbites. To read this book is to better understand the news you're stuck with being fed.
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A poetic, topical book that puts a contemporary twist on historical and spiritual (and political) issues pertaining to human rights and human potential. Highly recommended. Readers young and old should also pick up Hurston's "Tell My Horse: Voodoo And Life In Haiti And Jamaica."
Rated by buyers -
A good read. Hurston does an excellent job of depicting the parallel experiences of the captivity of the Israelites and the American Slave. In fact, one could argue that the experience of the Israelites is the American Slave experience. This is a great book for high school reading, it provides a variety of cause and effect themes that all young adults need to know; among them, if you oppress a people or person you breed fear, insecurity, and eventual self hatred in that human. I highly recommend Their Eyes Were Watching God another of Hurston's literary jewels. jewels.
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