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A review by jennifermreads
The Skull Talks Back: And Other Haunting Tales by Leonard Jenkins, Zora Neale Hurston, Joyce Carol Thomas
2.0
Inspired by the new picture book Jump at the Sun, I was eager to read some Zora Neale Hurston … but I didn’t want to start where everyone does, with Their Eyes Were Watching God. And what better place to begin than a book of stories for children, right? Because they’ll be short and easily digestible? Except …
I feel like the middle and end were missing from the stories, and, that the pieces that make them folktales, were buried or eliminated. Was the adaptation poorly done? These cannot be Hurston’s words, can they? I’ve heard such gushing over Joyce Carol Thomas’s work and how she is to be credited, with Alice Walker, for bringing Hurston’s work to the world rather than letting in languish in archives. I’m baffled enough that I requested the original book from which these tales were taken, Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Stories from the Gulf States so that I can judge on the original text and collection.
I feel like the middle and end were missing from the stories, and, that the pieces that make them folktales, were buried or eliminated. Was the adaptation poorly done? These cannot be Hurston’s words, can they? I’ve heard such gushing over Joyce Carol Thomas’s work and how she is to be credited, with Alice Walker, for bringing Hurston’s work to the world rather than letting in languish in archives. I’m baffled enough that I requested the original book from which these tales were taken, Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Stories from the Gulf States so that I can judge on the original text and collection.