Just pulled out Ann Charters’ The Story and Its Writer, the textbook used in my last Contemporary Fiction course as one of the easiest spots to dive right in and start learning to read and write.
I admit, I chose by title and page length to select a story, and “The Gilded Six-Bits” by Zora Neale Hurston caught my fancy. Written in 1933, the dialogue catches the language of black Americans of the Florida town where Hurston grew up, and as is often the case of cultural and regional based fiction, the reading is at first difficult until by the end of the first page, you’re more in rhythm with the style and feel completely comfortable with it as you go along.
I had already read Hurston’s essay, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” and was enchanted with her spirit, style and sense of humor that belies the passion of overcoming myths of ethnicity common in belief to the time and place. This opening line from the essay sealed my admiration for her honest writing: “I am colored but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother’s side was not an Indian chief.”
And this line, from “The Gilded Six-Bits” drew a deeper sigh of jealous admiration of her writing: “The front yard was parted in the middle by a sidewalk from gate to doorstep…”
Parted in the middle? What wondrous metaphor in turning the location into a living thing. These words will never leave my mind, the description can never be more perfect, and I can never again come upon this physical scene without Hurston’s version enhancing my perception.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology