Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick, by Zora Neale Hurston
It's a bit of a strange title, isn't it? That's what I thought anyway, before I read it. But having finished the book, and having done a little bit of googling, I have come to the conclusion that it is a great title. I'll come back to why, at the end.
This book is not a novel, but a collection of short stories by Zora Neale Hurston. She was a black woman living and writing in America in the 1920s and 1930s - in a time and a culture when being black and being a woman put her in quite a subjugated position. When Hurston died, she was buried in an unmarked grave, and her work has only really taken off posthumously - she is now regarded with the respect she always deserved, as a fantastic writer.
I really enjoyed this collection. I thought it was characterful and lively, I found it funny, and the literature nerd in me relished the fact that there was ample opportunity for a bit of feminist criticism!
One of the first things that struck me about Hurston's writing was that her dialogue was written in an accent. On page one, John's father says "Aw, woman, stop dat talk 'bout conjure. 'Tain't so nohow. Ah doan want Jawn tuh git dat foolishness in him." Reading in my head, I could straightaway tell from the dialogue that the speaker was a black American. And when I read out loud, it came out of my mouth in a Southern US accent! That's not an accent I can consciously do, which I think shows something of Hurston's masterful skill. It just gives her characters such life and authenticity. As Tayari Jones puts it in her foreword, 'Hurston captured the language of her community phonetically, so that none of the music and magic would be lost in the alchemy from breath to ink.'
But it was only after doing a bit of further digging into the context in which Hurston was writing that I realised just how significant this actually was. Hurston was living and working during the Harlem Renaissance - a period of revival for African American culture and arts. One common approach by black writers of the time, aiming to empower and venerate black people in literature, was to write about the more refined, upper-class aspects of African American life, to challenge stereotypes and perceptions about black communities. But Hurston didn't see this as empowering for black communities. She believed there was no reason to be ashamed of a lower class folk culture, that trying to portray black lives in a way that would be acceptable to white people was the wrong approach. Instead, she boldly and proudly wrote her short stories in this earthy voice, even though it might be viewed as undesirable or shameful. She was less about conforming to the norm, and more about celebrating difference and diversity.
This earthy accent and dialect was paired with similarly earthy content. All these stories revolve around romantic relationships, and all of them contain some sort of scandal or conflict within that. And this theme is where Hurston invites the feminist criticism. Her critiquing of gender roles was not an obvious, outright, explicit protest, but more of a gentle, subtle, subversive criticism, inviting the reader to think about gender roles and conventions. For example, the story 'Spunk' explores the situation of a timid man called Joe, whose wife is having an affair with a very scary macho man called Spunk; Joe makes the brave/foolish decision to stand up to Spunk even though he knows he will never win in a fight. The story works as a narrative in its own right, without digging any deeper, but it can also be interpreted as a fascinating criticism of what it means to be masculine. Hurston invites so many fascinating questions about who is the manlier man - Spunk or Joe - and the different perspectives on this debate are voiced by the other characters in the community. You could think about it, talk about it, write about it, for a long time.
But although this was all very good and very clever, my favourite stories were the ones like 'The Book of Harlem' - because they were just so funny. They were written in mock Biblical language, in verses like psalms, but the content of the stories was no different from the rest of the collection. And there was something so amusing about reading scandalous tales of flirtatious hedonism presented in such holy language. Here are two lines that made me giggle.
'Also when he arose in the morning and at noonday his mouth flew open and he said "Verily, I am a wise guy. I knoweth all about women."'
'"Go to, get thyself Oxford bags of exceeding bagginess, and procure thyself much haberdashery. Moreover, seek out the shop of hair cutting and those that do massage and manicure, and see that thy hair is of such slickness that thou dare not hurl thyself into the bed lest thou wear weed chains, for verily thou shalt skid out again."'
Hurston has got the Biblical language bang on, and as well as being rebelliously funny, borrowing the Biblical form and genre to communicate her spicy and irreverent stories is another great technique for elevating, venerating and validating the stories of these black Americans of the 1920s. She pairs the sacred and the secular, the widely known and the untold, the respected and the disempowered. Clever.
So why is 'Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick' such a good title? Well firstly because it's a colloquial phrase from the Southern US. (This does explain why it wasn't familiar to me!) It would have been familiar to Hurston and anyone else from her area, meaning that it captures that overarching sense in this collection of being rooted in this characterful and authentic place and community. But it also works as an epithet for the collection because of what it means. Hurston herself has defined 'hitting a straight lick with a crooked stick' as 'making a way out of no way.' And if you think about it, that is what this short story collection achieves. Hurston has broken barriers and made a voice for herself and her community. Through her subtle subversions and challenges of gender, through her bold use of an authentic dialect and voice, through the humour and liveliness of her prose, she has elevated a group of people who were ultimately disempowered. She has made a way for them, where there really was no way. Isn't literature powerful?