Loco in Yokohama

I was in my early twenties the first time I read “Their eyes were watching God.”

I was an avid reader but rarely had I been so moved as I was while reading this book. 

I didn’t know who Zora was. We’d never learned about her when I was a child. My elementary school primarily focused us students on the greatness of African Americans, particularly in the Arts. We were encouraged to read many books by popular and even some not so popular black writers. But, Zora was not among them. There was “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker, of course. And, the choreo-poem, “For Colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf”  by Ntozake Shange. And  then there was “Sula” by Toni Morrison and one of my all time favorites, “The Friends” by Rosa Guy (the first book to actually make me cry almost throughout). 

But, no Zora.

She was a lost treasure, basically, til Alice Walker went in search of the woman and found her unmarked grave somewhere in Florida where she died the romantic death of an artist, penniless and under appreciated.

Thank you, Ms. Walker! And may the Creator’s blessings remain upon you forever!

“Their eyes were watching good” is held up as Zora’s masterpiece. At the time it was published, however, it was not. Even other writers I admired trashed it. Richard Wright, for one, shredded it in a review. Accused her of pandering to white superiority. Said she was trying to tell a story that would only appeal to them. That black folk didn’t need stories that portrayed them as quaint and illiterate circulating about reinforcing what whites already believed, while intellectuals like him get looked upon as freaks and exceptions to the rule of black inferiority.

These were troubled times for blacks in the America. We were holding on to our dignity and self-esteem with our teeth and fingernails.

And, Zora comes along and writes a powerful novel starring characters so plain-spoken as to resemble caricatures, dialogues written phonetically so that most readers would have to read the conversations aloud to even understand what the characters were saying, as they lived out there lives of simplicity free of white influence, in the first incorporated black township in America.

It was audacious. Profound. She was post-race before people could even envision post-race. Even now we can only glimpse it. I think it was because she was an anthropologist. She studied people, the way they lived and the way they talked. She travelled a great deal in the South of the US and in the Caribbean, and learned things that people trapped in the US mindset couldn’t understand at the time.

I think she discovered something in her travels. Travelling, not to take pictures of famous places and come home to show them to friends, but to study about life and humanity, does something to a person. It frees the mind from the constraints that most people aren’t even aware of. Digging up folklore, and listening to the stories passed down through the ages orally, as they were done traditionally, and the nature of things becomes more apparent.

I suspect.

And this is what Zora brought to all her work. This discovery,though language is power, that laced in language is love. That language, spoken language, has an inherent poetry and vividness that is lost when it is comtemporized and formalized. The beauty gets lost.

Zora never lost it.

Love you Zora. Thank you for keeping the oral tradition alive even in print. Your work is miraculous. A tradition that you taught us all is worth preserving.

 Loco

PS: In case you didn’t know, your boy Loco is looking a place in black history right in the face with the publishing of his critically acclaimed first book: Hi! My Name is Loco and I am a Racist! (now available from both Amazon and Barnes & Noble online!).

This book reflects my own knowledge and love of black history, which began with my parents making sure I learned it in lieu of “American” or “Eurocentric” history from the tender age of six.

This book is more than about life in Japan. It is a memoir of my active participation in several major movements and  how these events have helped shape my current world view for the better! Don’t take my word for it. LET READERS TELL YOU: See what they’ve said here on Amazon

Get your copy here.

For more info, check out the book’s webpage here: www.himynameisloco.com