Mules and Men / Zora Neal Hurston

 Word Count: 245

Parker Greene

From Mules and Men by Zora Neal Hurston

    " 'Hello, heart-string,' Mayor Hiram Lester yelled as he hurried up the street. 'We heard all about you up North. You back home for good, I hope.'

    'Nope, Ah come to collect some old stories and tales and Ah know y'all know a plenty of 'em and that's why Ah headed straight for home.'

    'What you mean, Zora, them big old lies we tell when we're jus' sittin' around here on the store porch doin' nothin'?' asked B. Moseley. " (pg. 407)

In this excerpt of Mules and Men from Zora Hurston, she talks about her journey back down to Eatonville, Florida in order to collect stories from people in her hometown. Zora was met with a warm welcome back to her hometown, people were asking her if she was staying fully or not since she had left to go to school at Barnard College. Zora had only come back with the intention on getting as many stories from the townspeople as she could. She was quickly introduced into toe parties where girls would hide themselves except for a toe and then would be bought for a dime. This is pretty creepy almost that women would get sold for a date by just showing a toe and then a man pays a dime for them. This makes for really interesting stories, as we see here, but the concept of that is just weird to me.