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A review by mjbirdy
Every Tongue Got to Confess by Zora Neale Hurston
2.0
This book is a collection of folktales intended to celebrate the African American oral tradition, community and faith.
I suspect that the book is much better and easier to consume when actually reading it, as opposed to listening to the audiobook.
The folk tales are grouped together by the overarching themes of religion, greed, slavery, race etc and are rarely distinguishable from one another because the factual information is the same. This made it so that you couldn’t really listen to the book for more than a few minutes at a time, because I’m 5 minutes you’ve heard the same tale told 5/6 times.
Hurston just documents these tales and provides no analysis or commentary on the meanings of them or the cultural environment that birthed them.
I think the repetition of the stories didn’t allow for those that were funny to feel funny (think when you watch a funny meme on Instagram but you can’t touch your phone when it’s done so it plays again and again, and each time it less abs less funny). Similarly, I didn’t feel sad or honestly anything. I just wanted to get through it and that’s the worst feeling when you’re reading anything
I suspect that the book is much better and easier to consume when actually reading it, as opposed to listening to the audiobook.
The folk tales are grouped together by the overarching themes of religion, greed, slavery, race etc and are rarely distinguishable from one another because the factual information is the same. This made it so that you couldn’t really listen to the book for more than a few minutes at a time, because I’m 5 minutes you’ve heard the same tale told 5/6 times.
Hurston just documents these tales and provides no analysis or commentary on the meanings of them or the cultural environment that birthed them.
I think the repetition of the stories didn’t allow for those that were funny to feel funny (think when you watch a funny meme on Instagram but you can’t touch your phone when it’s done so it plays again and again, and each time it less abs less funny). Similarly, I didn’t feel sad or honestly anything. I just wanted to get through it and that’s the worst feeling when you’re reading anything