Where is the black version of Caddie Woodlawn (a 19th-century Wisconsin tomboy) or Harriet the Spy (a 20th-century Upper East Sider), smart, spunky, fictional heroines for the tween crowd?
The novel depicts Hurston as a bright, imaginative fourth grader, living with her family and friends in an all-black Florida town, around 1900. Zora, Carrie (the first-person narrator) and their friend Teddy try to figure out what happened when a man’s headless body is discovered by the railroad tracks.
“Fictionalizing Zora gave us creative freedom,” said Ms. Bond, a 31-year-old lecturer in composition and classics at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who has an M.F.A. in creative writing.
Added Ms. Simon, 44, who writes under the name T. R. Simon: “We wanted to write a book that would help people fall in love with Zora. I wanted them to be able to see that bridge from childhood intellectual curiosity to adult production.”
“Zora and Me” is the first book not written by Hurston that has been endorsed by the Zora Neale Hurston Trust, created in 2002 to manage the business of bringing Hurston’s work to a widening audience. (Some 500,000 copies of her books are sold each year, according to the trust.) The buzz so far has been good: Kirkus Reviews called the 192-page mystery “absolutely outstanding.”
Full piece at NYT.
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