WRITING FOR PUBLICATION
SPUNK
1. Personal Expressive
PLAY GUIDE
Music was a major form of expression during the Harlem Renaissance. What did you
think about the music in Spunk? How did the music/lyrics make you feel? Choose
one of the three stories in the play. If you could make your own soundtrack for that
story, what songs would you choose? Why? Write a short essay explaining your
choices.
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ABOUT THE
PLAY
GUIDE
This play guide is a standards-based resource designed to enhance
2. Literary
your theatre experience. Its goal is twofold: to nuture the teaching and
learning of theatre arts and to encourage essential questions that lead to
enduring understandings of the play’s meaning and relevance. Inside you
will find history/contextual information, vocabulary, and worksheets that
lay the groundwork of the story and build anticipation for the
performance. Oral discussion and writing prompts encourage your
students to reflect upon their impressions and to analyze and relate key
ideas to their personal experiences and the world around them. These
can easily be adapted to fit most writing objectives. The Bridgework
connects theatre elements with ideas for drama activities in the
classroom as well as integrated curriculum. We encourage you to adapt
and extend the material in any way to best fit the needs of your
community of learners. Please feel free to make copies of this guide, or
you may download it from our website: www.actorstheatre.org. We hope
this material, combined with our pre-show workshops, will give you the
tools to make your time at Actors Theatre a valuable learning experience.
In small groups, analyze the relationship between Sykes and Delia. What is Sykes
side of the story? What is Delia’s? How are they strong? Weak? Now on your own,
choose the voice of one of the characters to write a poem. Write a poem in either
Sykes’ voice expressing the way he feels about Delia, or in Delia’s voice in the same
manner.
3. Transactive
Table of Contents
After seeing Spunk, write a theatrical critique of the production. Pretend you are
writing for a local newspaper. Describe three elements that stood out to you (maybe
an actor’s performance, the set, the costumes, etc.). Why should or shouldn’t someone
see this production?
The Spunk Study Guide includes:
g Page 2: Synopsis of Tales
g Page 3: Zora Neale Hurston
g Page 4: George C. Wolfe: His Life in Theatre
g Page 5: Folklore and Townfolk: Where did Hurston’s stories come from?
g Page 6: The Harlem Renaissance
g Page 7: The Blues
g Page 8: Say What? The Language of Spunk
g Page 9: Discussion and Themes
g Page 10-11: Bridgework
g Page 12: Writing for Publication
Need more help?
Check out our Young Critics Workshops! Have an Actors Theatre teaching artist
visit your classroom to give your students the inside scoop on how to write a
theatrical critique.
Students who have written a critique on an Actors Theatre production may
submit their work to be posted on our website! To submit online, please send
all critiques as email attachments to [email protected] with the subject
heading ‘Young Critics Contest.’ Please be sure to include your name, school, teacher,
grade, and contact information.
The Spunk matinee and Study Guide address specific
KY Core Content
g
Actors Theatre
Education Department
Katie Blackerby Weible, Education Director
Jess Jung, Associate Education Director
Lee Look, New Voices Coordinator
Actors Theatre of Louisville
g
Box Office 502–584–1205
316 West Main Street
g
g
Louisville, Kentucky 40202–4218
Group Sales 502–585–1210
g
USA
Ganelle Holman, Education Intern
Stephanie Ong, Education Intern
Business Office 502–584–1265
ActorsTheatre.org
12
g
AH-1.3.1: Students will identify the elements of drama.
AH-2.3.1: Students will analyze how time, place and ideas are
reflected in drama/theatre.
g AH-3.3.1: Students will explain how drama/theatre fulfills a variety of
purposes.
g AH-HS-3.1.1: Students will explain how music fulfills a variety of
purposes.
g AH-1.3.1: Students will analyze the use of technical elements, literary
elements and performance elements.
g SS-HS-2.1.1: Students will explain how belief systems, knowledge,
technology and behavior patterns define cultures and help to explain
historical perspectives.
g SS-HS-4.2.2: Students will explain how physical and human characteristics of regions create advantages and disadvantages for human activities in a specific place.
g RD-5.0.2: Students will analyze the author’s use of literary devices.
g RD-1.0.4: Students will interpret the meaning of jargon, dialect, or
specialized vocabulary.
g
The Hearst
Foundation, Inc.
If you have any questions or suggestions regarding our play guides,
please feel free to contact Katie Blackerby Weible, Director of Education,
at (502) 584-1265 or [email protected].
Study Guide compiled by Stephanie Ong, Ganelle Holman, Charles
Haugland and Katie Blackerby Weible.
Synopsis of Tales
Character List
Story in
Harlem Slang
Delia: married to Sykes
Character List
Sykes: Delia’s unfaithful snake of a
husband
Slang Talk Man: narrator
Sweat
Bertha: Sykes’ new girlfriend
Blues Speak Woman: narrates
tales in the tone of the blues
Guitar Man: narrator; signals
when the tales begin and end
Jelly: a pimp; male prostitute
Sweet Back: one of Jelly’s
colleagues
Girl: young lady
Synopsis: You Dig?
Story in Harlem Slang begins with a
debonair man named Slang Talk Man,
who is the narrator of the second tale
in Hurston’s Spunk. Along with Blues
Man Two: another member of the
Speak Woman, the two add various
ensemble; narrates and transitions
scats and underscoring to the Harlem
between two to three characters
world of Lenox Avenue in which two
smooth-talking, imaginative pimps
Synopsis
live. The first and the younger of the
Sweat is the first tale in George C.
two to appear is Jelly. Jelly’s approach
Wolfe’s bluesy adaptation of three Zora to the streets is “sugar-curing the
Neale Hurston short stories. The show ladies’ feelings” in order to secure a
opens in the middle of an abusive
free meal. Shortly after Jelly is
argument between Delia, a
introduced Sweet Back enters,
hardworking “amen-corner
threatening Jelly’s territory. Although
Christian,” and her husband Sykes,
they appear to be old pals, their
a lazy do-nothing who “ain’t wuth
conversations involve challenging one
de shot an’ powder it would tek tuh
another’s egos. When a young Girl
kill ‘em.” Delia makes all the money,
is spotted making her way towards
providing food and shelter for her and them, the battle really begins. Who
Sykes. Meanwhile he keeps company
will get the Girl and who will be left
with Bertha, a newcomer in town who with a broken heart and an empty
“don’t look lak a thing but a hunk uh
stomach?
liver wid hair on it.”
When Delia married Sykes she was
young and beautiful, with her lovely
little house and a head full of dreams.
Now her “cup done runneth ova.”
Fights are a common occurrence in
their marriage. Even the neighbors
know that Sykes “done beat huh
‘nough tuh kill three women,” but this
time he’s gone too far. Fully aware
that Delia is terrified of snakes, Sykes
brings a vicious rattler into their
home. He’ll do anything to make Delia
run away and keep the house for
himself…anything except work! Will
Sykes slither his way to victory, taking
all of Delia’s possessions with him? Or
will her sweat keep the house afloat?
Man One: member of the ensemble;
narrates and transitions between two
to three characters
2
The Gilded
Six Bits
Character List
Create a Community
The following terms form the foundation of Hurston’s
work. Discuss the concepts and definitions:
Culture: Anything that human beings do that isn’t
motivated solely by natural instinct. It includes creative
and artistic expression, language development and use,
and formulation of beliefs and values.
Tradition: Meaningful cultural behavior (or lore) that
is passed down within the same group of people (or folk)
from generation to generation.
Narrative: A story of any kind which almost always
involves plot (sequence of events) and character.
After discussing, identify your own membership in folk
groups. Loosely defined, a folk group is two or more
people who share at least one common factor. You will find
that you belong to many folk groups when you
consider gender, age, race, class and interests. Divide into
small groups according to height, clothing worn, or type of
shoe. (Make sure each group is no more than 4 or 5). Each
group makes a list of shared commonalities. These can
be physical (hairstyle or eye color, etc.) as well as cultural
(geography, religion, musical taste, childhood beliefs,
traditions and customs). The group with the most
commonalities wins!
Missie May: a young housewife
Joe: Missie’s husband
Otis T. Slemmons: a big-city
business man from Chicago
Synopsis
Missie May and her husband Joe have
the ideal life. She minds the home
while Joe works, and in return he buys
gifts that delight her. When Joe takes
Missie to Otis Slemmons’ Ice Cream
Parlor, however, Otis takes an
interest in Missie and uses his slick
influence to seduce her. Will Joe be
able to forgive her?
CROSS-CURRICULAR CONNECTIONS
Social Studies
1887: Eatonville was an all-black, self-governing
community. Its residents were able to live without fear of
racial uprising or even cultural differences.
2007: In America’s “melting pot”, our focus is on an
integrated society. Yet some cultures feel their traditions
and beliefs are threatened by young people’s exposure to
many different cultures. In response, some cultures are
forming special clubs, classes or even schools in order to
preserve and honor their heritage. In your opinion, is this
a separation or merely an act of honoring ancestry? Have
a class discussion and then write down your thoughts to
use as a springboard for a transactive essay.
Language Arts/Literature
HARLEM RENAISSANCE and HIP-HOP POETRY*
Imagery: The use of language to evoke a picture or a
concrete sensation of a person, a thing, a place, or an
experience.
The Harlem Renaissance writers of the 1920s and 1930s
included Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, W.E.B.
Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson and Claude McKay,
among others. Their writing greatly influenced AfricanAmerican writing that would come later, even the music
of today. Both Hip-Hop and Rap find their roots in the
music and words of this era. The following is a
well-known poem by Langston Hughes.
Harlem: A Dream Deferred
By Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun
Or fester like a sore- And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over- Like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
1. Note how Hughes uses imagery for all five senses in his
poem.
• Sight: Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun
• Taste: Or crust and sugar over-Like a syrupy sweet?
• Touch: Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
• Smell: Does it stink like rotten meat?
• Sound: Or does it explode?
2. Each image represents something that was once useful
or productive but, having been left alone for too long, (i.e.,
like a dream deferred), becomes useless, decayed and
possibly even self-destructive. How does the imagery
answer the question put forth by Hughes in line one,
“What happens to a dream deferred?”
3. What is the unspoken message Hughes is telling the
readers about going after their own dreams?
4. Pick your favorite hip-hop song (for example, Juicy by
Notorious B.I.G.) and identify the imagery (sight, taste,
touch, smell, and sound) the artist uses to put forth his or
her message.
(* Source - Hip Hop Poetry and the Classics in the Classroom, by Alan Sitomer)
YOUR STORY
Allow Hurston’s ability to write about her childhood home
inspire you to write about yours. What is a significant
memory of a time or place in your past? Write a
reflective piece, describing an event in detail. What was
this event’s effect on you? How were you changed? Be
sure to use imagery, metaphor, simile, and any other
literary device you might choose. When your story is finished, adapt it into a short scene, focusing on the
literary elements of character, dialogue and monologue.
Anyway, the force from somewhere in space which
commands you to write in the first place, gives you no choice.
You take up the pen when you are told, and write what is
commanded. There is no agony like bearing an untold
story inside you.
– Zora Neale Hurston
11
BRIDGEWORK:
Building Connections between Stage and Classroom
The following exercises combine creative drama, theatre concepts and core content to connect the theatre experience with drama activities
in your classroom. By exploring drama as a mode of learning, students strengthen skills for creative problem solving, imagination and critical thinking.
Core Content Connection - The activities are designed using the Elements of Drama: Literary, Technical and Performance. (CoreContent 4.1)
AT YOUR DESK Activities
ON YOUR FEET Activities
Where I’m From…
Zora Neal Hurston based most of her writing on her own
childhood environment. Think of where you come from.
Brainstorm a list of sensory images that describe your
environment. (ex. – long dirt roads, green beans cooked
on the stove all day, children shrieking while running
through the sprinkler on hot summer nights, etc). Next,
make a list of phrases that you have heard or spoken
yourself often. (ex. – “Not in this house”, “Remember
who you are”, “Sit up straight”, “Pipe down”, “Give it your
best”, etc.).
After your lists are complete, arrange the images and
phrases any way you wish. Begin your poem with “I Come
From…” and fill in. You may repeat the phrase “I Come
From” many times within the poem. (For more information, see George Ella Lyon’s Where I’m From.)
Warm-ups
Problems and Fix-Its
• When playwrights develop scripts, they create obstacles
for each character. The character’s goal is to find a way to
overcome obstacles. Divide into four groups, each group in
one corner of the room. Each group imagines one large
object (possibly a car or piano) and pantomime moving
that object to the other side of the room, avoiding the
other groups along the way. After all four groups have
made it to the opposite corner, reveal to the class your
group’s object and what tactics the group used to
successfully move it.
• Divide into groups of the three or four students. Each
group imagines one small object (a ring or watch, for
example). Devise (in pantomime) three tools to fix the
object. The first two tools fail, but the third one succeeds.
Create a Sound Design
The technical element of sound creates mood and places
us in a specific time and place. Assume the role of sound
designer for your own contemporary production of Spunk.
Think of the themes of each story in the play. What
popular music would you choose to put in your production
that reflects the main ideas and characters? What sound
effects would be in a contemporary version of the play?
Compile a list of both sound effects and music that you
would use.
School Blues
Have a brainstorming session to answer the question,
“What do you dislike about school?” Write the answers on
the board. Use the answers to write a short blues song in
AAB structure.
I woke up too early, don’t want to spend time reading books. A
I woke up too early, don’t want to spend time reading books. A
Better get it together, my teacher keeps giving me looks. B
Take turns singing/reading your song aloud, while the
rest of the class echoes each line in the call-and-response
model.
10
Atmosphere and Gesture
Atmosphere is intangible, but palpable. Create a large
enough space that all students can walk freely around the
classroom. Creating an atmosphere is kind of like
walking through a dense fog. While you are walking, a
leader will call out a theme word that creates an
atmosphere: exhaustion, celebration, hunger, and
friendship are all appropriate themes for Spunk. Each
time a word is called, you are to embody each atmosphere,
possibly changing your physicality each time. Now find a
gesture that is appropriate for each atmosphere.
Repeated gestures and text can be added to develop a
scene, or you may read dialogue from Spunk.
Storytelling/Oral Tradition
The use of storytelling is a form of oral tradition, the
verbal passing down of information from one
generation to the next. Think of a story, game or song that
has been passed around in your family. Maybe it came
from a grandparent or distant relative. It may be real or
fictitious. Try to remember the details (or make them up if
you cannot). In small groups, sit in a circle and share with
the rest of the members of your circle.
Improvisation/Tableaux
Take the stories that were shared in the above exercise.
Each group chooses one story that was shared. Have the
primary storyteller tell the story as the rest of the group
dramatizes the story, creating tableaux (still images) that
represent parts of the story.
ZORA NEALE HURSTON
“Hurston’s travel resulted in the first folklore book by a black American. The Mule and
Men contains seventy folktales that not only tell the stories of slaves and harship, but
of female empowerment, which is what Hurston most liked to highlight.”
Zora Neale Hurston was born in the all-black rural town
of Eatonville, Florida. Hurston was known to list her
birthday as January 7, 1901 or even 1903. However,
scholars have speculated her birth year was actually
1891.
Hurston started her academic career at Morgan
Academy in Baltimore before attending Howard
University in 1918. There she was featured in the school’s
literary magazine, Stylus. In the club’s second
issue, two of her pieces were published: “John Reading
Goes to Sea” and her poem “O Night”. Hurston’s
popularity quickly grew when Charles S. Johnson, editor
of Opportunity Magazine, wrote to congratulate Hurston
on an impressive story and to request more material
for his magazine. Hurston’s second story, “Drenched in
Light”, was then published in another issue of
Opportunity. Two other works, “Spunk” and “Color Stuck”,
gained recognition winning second place in the magazine’s
literary contest. “Spunk” was later published in the June
issue of the magazine.
During Zora Neale Hurston’s rise to the top of the
literary world, she transferred out of Howard
University to attend Barnard College on scholarship.
There she received her B.A. in anthropology and worked
with famed anthropologists Ruth Benedict, Franz Boaz
and Margaret Mead.
In 1925, while in New York, Hurston joined forces
with Wallace Thurman and Langston Hughes to produce
an avant-garde journal called Fire!! This collaboration
secured Hurston’s name in the Harlem Renaissance
movement of the 20’s and 30’s. Fire!!, however, ended up
publishing only one issue. That November 1926 issue
included Hurston’s “Sweat”. Hurston also worked with
Hughes on Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life.
Another collaboration which helped place Hurston
on the map was her teamwork with anthropologist Franz
Boaz. Boaz arranged for Hurston to travel throughout
the South to gather folklore. Hurston’s travels resulted
in the first folklore book by a black American: The Mules
and Men contains seventy folktales that not only tell the
stories of slaves and hardship, but of female
empowerment, which is what Hurston most liked to
highlight.
Among Hurston’s other acclaimed works were Their
Eyes Were Watching God (1937), which she wrote while
spending seven weeks in Haiti, Man of the Mountain
(1939), and her autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road
which won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Race
Relations in 1942.
Zora spent the last ten years of her life as a freelance
writer for newspapers and magazines. She managed to
keep writing short stories, essays and even worked as a
substitute teacher up until close to her death on
January 28, 1960.
3
George C. DISCUSSION AND THEMES
Wolfe:
PRE-SHOW QUESTIONS:
His Life in
Theatre
When George C. Wolfe was growing up in
Frankfort, Kentucky, he wanted to be an
actor more than anything. Four decades
later, he does everything else, renowned as
a director, a producer and a playwright.
Born in 1954, he loved theatre from an early age. He has
memories of the stage from the age of six, but he wasn’t
always sure of his place in it. His desire to act stemmed
from his impression that actors “made a lot of money,”
but by instinct, he was more interested in telling stories.
“I was always creating scenarios, creating plays with my
friends,” Wolfe says, “I was obsessed with theatre.”
When Wolfe was thirteen, he traveled to New York
City with his mother, seeing a revival of West Side Story
that crystallized everything for him. He realized for the
first time the wealth of different careers in theatre. He
remembers saying, “People can actually make a living
doing this!” It’s a moment he marks as the turning point
in knowing what his career would be. Following his
instinct, he went to college for theatre both here in
Kentucky and then in California.
Writing was his first arena of success. His two most
famous plays are The Colored Museum—a play that
satirizes stereotypes of African Americans—and Spunk.
In his directing career, he has headed up landmark
productions such as Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los
Angeles, 1992, which chronicles a series of riots that took
place in that year, and Tony Kushner’s Angels in America.
4
Following this series of successes on Broadway, Wolfe
was invited to be the producer for the Public Theater,
a New York theatre with a tremendous reputation. As
producer, Wolfe would pick the plays for the season and
assemble teams of artists he felt could best execute them.
This position excited Wolfe because his work was important
not only in terms of money—a problem he had encountered
working on Broadway. About the Public, he has praised
that “everybody was involved because they wanted to do
it, and there wasn’t a $5 million budget hanging over their
heads.” Because of this freedom, Wolfe used his position to
make the careers of many younger playwrights and
directors possible.
Just recently, Wolfe stepped down as producer, and is
now focused on directing for film and television.
Developing a project with rapper Kanye West, he
continues to be at the forefront of the arts in America.
He hasn’t stopped writing, though, as he has been
commissioned, or hired, to create a specific work by Actors
Theatre of Louisville to write an original play. It will be
produced at the 2009 Humana Festival of New American
Plays!
Before you enter the theatre, try to picture the world of
Spunk. Think about the tales of Zora Neale Hurston.
What kind of set do you expect to see? What style and
colors? What do you think the costumes will look like?
What elements of drama do you think will set the mood?
How?
How is seeing a play different from seeing a movie? As
an audience member, what types of things do you need to
keep in mind when going to see a live performance?
POST-SHOW QUESTIONS:
The dialects in Spunk differ in all three pieces, yet the
show maintains unity. What are some commonalties in
the way the characters speak? What are their differences?
Themes:
work, marriage, violence,
fidelity, religion, race, poverty
Symbols:
snake, laundry, money, “the git,”
storefront porch, gold, Blues Speak
Woman, Guitar Man
Motifs:
dialect, narration, flirtation,
the ensemble
As with spirituals in the South, down-home humor and
blues irony provided a strategy for survival and selfassertion for newly freed African-Americans. Consider
Spunk as the author’s attempt to celebrate the musical
culture of African-Americans. What role does the blues
play in Spunk? Who do Blues Speak Woman and Guitar
Man represent?
An easily recognizable stereotype of our time is the
rapping “thug,” who lives off the earnings of women, is
violent, and moves from job to job lacking commitment
and loyalty. Compare this contemporary version of the
struggling thug with men of times past, like Sykes, Jelly,
Sweetback, and Slemmons. Do you know anyone who fits
this description? Why are these men compelled to avoid
work?
What are some modern day examples of the storefront
porch like the one in Sweat, where gossip circulates and
wisdom is passed?
How do Hurston’s stories demonstrate the complexity of
the lives of common folks and the richness of their folk
culture? If you could paint a similar portrait of where
you come from, how would you hope it would be perceived
by your reader?
Work takes precedent over education for the characters in
Spunk. How might their lives have been different if they
had been given the opportunity to attend school? How
might yours be different if you weren’t?
9
Say What?
Folklore and Townfolk:
Where did Hurston’s stories come from?
The Language of Spunk
“The three stories each have very distinct language,
but all three tales evolve from what is known as
African American Vernacular English (AAVE).”
The language of African Americans was an element Zora
Neale Hurston wanted to carry throughout her stories.
The three stories each have very distinct language, but all
three tales evolve from what is known as African
American Vernacular English (AAVE). AAVE is
comprised of a variety of dialects of English, particularly
American English. AAVE can also be referred to as Black
English, African American English, and Ebonics.
The origins of AAVE are still questionable. There
is, however, a strong relationship between Ebonics and
Southern American English. AAVE is also connected to
South African and Creole languages. It is said the AAVE
started with various slave creoles. Due to the selling and
trading of slaves during the trans-Atlantic slave trade
(1450-1750), African languages were mixed with various
other African languages and also with the traders’ speech
as well.
In the two tales “Sweat” and “The Gilded Six-Bits”,
the language includes a number of distinct grammatical
features: phonology, or the sound of a language; aspect
marking, or the lack or use of the word “be” or “to be” in
a phrase; the omission of the final consonant, often using
an apostrophe in its place; and double negatives.
Examples:
-Phonology:
I=AH
My=Mah
That=Dat
-Aspect Marking:
That’s how come Ah done it=
That’s why I did it.
Well, Ah’m glad you does hate me=
Well, I’m glad you do hate me
-Omission of the final consonant:
missin’, lookin’, pas’ (past)
-Double negative:
There’s not nothin’ we can do.
8
“Hurston would travel
both to her childhood
home of Eatonville,
Florida and around the
South collecting the
folktales and songs of
African Americans.”
Sweat
DELIA: Sykes! Sykes!, mah Gawd! You take day
rattlesnake ‘way from heah! You gottuh. Oh Jesus, have
mussy!
SYKES: Ah ain’t got tuh do nuthin’ uh de kin’- fact is Ah
ain’t got tuh do nuthin’ but die.
The phonology of these phrases can be seen and heard in
the substitution of the “o” in to and nothing. What else do
you hear? Are there aspect markings in this line?
What words leave out the final consonant?
The Gilded Six-Bits
Missie: Do Jesus, AH ain’t knowed nothing’ ‘bout it.
Who de man done it?
Mother: Who, dat gal? She strong as a ox. She
gointer have planty mo’. We done fixed her wid sugar and
lard to sweeten her for de nex’ one.
Where are the double negatives in the lines?
Circle all the missing ending consonants.
What else do you see or hear differently in the lines?
Story in Harlem Slang
The language in “Story in Harlem Slang” has a few of the
same grammatical features of “Sweat” and “The Gilded
Six-Bits”, such as the omission of ending consonants and
phonology. However, the heavy use of slang sets this story
apart from the other two.
Some examples of slang used in the story are:
jump salty= get afraid
frail eel= pretty girl
dig= understand
Russian= a Southern Negro up North. “Rushed up here,”
hence, a Russian.
Girl: How much split you want back here? If your feets
don’t hurry and carry you ‘way from here, you’ll ride
away. I’ll spread my lungs all over New York and call the
law. Go ahead. Touch me! Bedbug! I’ll holler like a pretty
white woman!
Translation:
How far up do you want me to rip you jacket? If you don’t
hurry up and get away from me, you’ll ride away (in a
cop car). I’ll yell so loud that it will attract the police. Go
ahead. Touch me! Pest! I’ll yell like a pretty white women!
Throughout her career, Zora Neale Hurston tried to
balance her love of writing with her deep interest in
anthropology, or the study of another culture’s human
customs and social interactions. Using her college degree
in this field, Hurston would travel both to her childhood
home of Eatonville, Florida and around the South,
collecting the folktales and songs of African Americans.
Eatonville became a mythic backdrop for Hurston’s
work, and in Spunk is the literal setting for both “Sweat”
and “The Gilded Six-Bits.” Hurston felt a deep
connection to the place she was born and raised, in part
due to its cultural significance. Eatonville holds a unique
place in American history as the first incorporated
black-settled and black-governed town. Started in 1887,
the town was still in its infancy when Hurston was born.
The characters of the town show up throughout
Hurston’s stories. Though it may seem like Joe Clarke
is just another character, he was actually the real town
marshal for Eatonville, and often is credited as its
founder.
He had a porch much like in the story that was
infamous as a gossip spot. “Men sat around the store on
boxes and benches,” Hurston wrote in her autobiography,
“There were no discreet nuances of life on Joe Clarke’s
porch. There was open kindnesses, anger, hate, love, envy,
and its kinfolks. This was the spirit of that whole part of
the state.” In “Sweat,” look for the men sitting and
chewing sugar cane on Joe Clarke’s porch to compare.
However, Hurston isn’t always so literal in her
sources. In the three stories chosen for Spunk, Hurston
strikes a balance between her fictionalized past and
folklore. Like the folk stories she collected, she uses many
symbols and images throughout her work, often snakes.
To Southerners, snakes were both despised as lowly,
ground-dwelling creatures and respected for their
serious, sometimes fatal bite. In “Sweat,” Sykes torments
his wife, Delia, with a rattlesnake. Is this snake a devil
that is a reflection of Sykes’ evil or an emancipator that
can set Delia free?
Readers and audiences have seen this unique blend of
symbolism and folk mysticism elsewhere. At one point in
the same story, Delia walks to a Chinaberry tree—a tree
famous for its ability to survive droughts and known for its
knotted appearance. Perhaps these qualities will remind
you of a certain character. Look for these symbols, among
others, like Otis Slemmons’ “gold” coins, as you watch.
Hurston’s research into folk belief contributed to the
range of images she drew on for her writing. Hurston
called folklore the “boiled down juice of human living,”
echoing how her work distills and purifies everyday life in
the South. Rooted in her familial history and the stories
she collected as an anthropologist, Hurston’s tales evoke
the rhythms and texture of early twentieth-century life for
African Americans.
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The Harlem Renaissance
“Clubs were hopping as glistening, gilded Caucasian youth flocked uptown in search of music, drink
and hedonism that they viewed as distinctively African American.”
By the time World War I broke out in 1914, thousands of
ex-slaves had migrated north to develop African American
communities. Industry was booming, and America’s
immigration laws were cracking down on the number of
European immigrants allowed to enter the country.
African Americans saw the opportunity for work at wages
much higher than they were used to, packed up their
belongings, and moved up North. From the Deep South
they rode train lines to Chicago, Philadelphia,
Detroit, and New York. Harlem, New York was full of
impoverished African Americans searching for
employment in an area that was quickly becoming
overpopulated. This unlikely ‘hood served as the
backdrop to a remarkable artistic explosion known as the
Harlem Renaissance.
Clubs were hopping as glistening, gilded Caucasian
youth flocked uptown in search of music, drink, and
hedonism that they viewed as distinctively African
American. International artists like Picasso turned to
African culture for inspiration in their work, and ignited
public interests in the experiences of African Americans.
Kitchen maids like Zora Neale Hurston, a graduate of
Howard University in Washington, D.C., were now of
particular interest to wealthy patrons who took a strong
and sudden liking to artists of such “primitive
background.” Widows of prominent New York
physicians and psychologists, for example, would spend
their life’s work seeing to the survival of the history of
African Americans.
This hunt for folklore led Zora back to her hometown
in the swamps of Florida, where she collected characters
for the majority of her most famous works, including the
three short stories that make up Spunk. Some intellectual African Americans of the era
criticized the stories Hurston wrote during the Harlem
Renaissance because, as her homeboy Langston Hughes
put it, “she did not write fiction in the protest tradition.”
Instead, Hurston focused on what she knew of the
southern black existence and tried to create characters
and storylines that truly reflected black life. Hurston had
“been in sorrow’s kitchen and licked out all the pots. [She
had] stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows,
with a harp and sword in [her] hands,” and she intended
to portray life with as much irony and complexity as she
had experienced it.
The Harlem Renaissance, like most of 1920s
culture, flickered and died with the 1929 stock market
crash. Langston Hughes would later dismiss the
Harlem Renaissance as lightweight and faddish, a hiccup
of a trend that failed at lifting African-American artists
to their full potential. There is no question, however, that
the Harlem Renaissance laid the foundation for Richard
Wright, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, and other important African American writers to come.
SPUNK FURTHER READING
Black Dialects & Reading by Bernice C. Cullinan, 1974
Black Talk: Words and Phrases from the Hood to the Amen
Corner by Geneva Smitherson, 1994
Dictionary of Afro-American Slang by Clarence Major, 1970
Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston, 1980
Harlem’s Glory: Black Women Writing, 1900-1950 by Lorraine
Elena Roses, 1996
Hip: the History by John Leland, 2004
Juba to Jive: a Dictionary of African American Slang by Clarence
Major, 1994
Now a fairly well-funded and flourishing center for
the arts, Harlem spawned Zora Neale Hurston’s writing
career. She met other artists such as Langston Hughes,
a former bus boy and college graduate who, like Hurston,
scored a wealthy patron of the arts. Hurston was
employed at $200 a month to gather folk tales and history
of the African-American south.
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Major Black American Writers through the Harlem Renaissance
by Harold Bloom, 1995
Speak, so you can speak again by Lucy Hurston, 2004
Women of the Harlem Renaissance by Cheryl A. Wall, 1995
The Blues
The blues were born in the North Mississippi Delta at
the intersection of Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and
Louisiana in the years following the Civil War.
Influenced by field hollers, ballads, and church hymns,
the blues evolved into music for a singer who would
engage in call-and-response with his guitar. He would
sing a line, and his guitar would answer.
One legend went that if an aspiring bluesman waited
by the side of a deserted country crossroads in the dark
of a moonless night, then Satan himself might come and
tune his guitar, sealing a pact for the bluesman’s soul and
guaranteeing a lifetime of easy money, women, and fame.
For many years the blues were recorded only by memory,
and only relayed live and in person. With its 12-bar,
bent-note melody, the blues became the anthem of the
African- American race, much like Negro Spirituals had
during slavery, bonding the race together with cries of
victimization. Bad luck and trouble are always present in
the blues, pressing upon unfortunate and downtrodden
souls, both black and white, who yearn to be free from
life’s troubles.
From the crossroads of Highways 61 and 49, the
blues headed north to Beale Street in Memphis, where its
form was first popularized. Many of Memphis’ best blues
artists left the city when mayor “Boss” Crump shut down
Beale Street in an attempt to stop prostitution, gambling,
and drug trades. The blues migrated to Chicago, where it
became electrified. The year 1920 marked the beginning
of the blues recording craze and the Jazz Age of flappers
and speakeasies. Mamie Smith recorded the first vocal
blues song, “Crazy Blues,” in that year.
Classic blues singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey
retained much of the Delta’s country blues in their
12-bar, 3-line structure, and in their rough-voiced
moans, slurs, and blue notes.
The blues have strongly influenced almost all
popular music including country and rock and roll. BB
King, a regular on Beale Street, invented the lead
guitarist now standard in today’s rock bands.
Blues-based bands like the Rolling Stones, Cream, and
Fleetwood Mac expanded blues to young Caucasians,
creating a marketable audience for guitarists such as
Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix who used the blues as
a foundation for offshoot styles. Spunk too, with its
3-story structure and call-and-response narration, is
told in the tone of the blues.
Field Hollers: Similar to spirituals, field hollers followed the call-and-response model. One of the more
respected field hands would lead the workers in a song,
while others responded in sync with the rhythmic tone
of the call, determined by the tempo of the work. This
is a theme seen often in the lyrics of blues songs. Blues
incorporated the rhythmic patterns of field hollers to
form its unique sound.
Ballads: Ballads are narrative poems set to music, a
story told in a song. Any story may be told as a ballad,
such as personal memories or fairy tales in verse form.
A ballad usually has simple repeating rhymes, often
with a refrain.
Church Hymns: A church hymn is a song specifically
written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer,
and typically addressed to God.
Zora Neale Hurston: a literary biography by Robert Hemenway,
1995
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