LOOKING FOR ZORA

I had planned, tonight, to update about my television experience on Monday. My God, what a wonderful experience it was! I do plan to do that (perhaps tomorrow) but for now I feel strongly about sharing a few blips from Alice Walker's essay, "Zora Neale Hurston" in her collection of essays, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. Perhaps it rang a bell for me because of these times we find ourselves in: skyrocketing gas and energy prices, the rising costs for basic goods and services (read: food) which should serve as a reminder for every artist to live frugally, as far back from the edge as possible, if we are at all to be free to pursue our work, our craft. But moreover, I think it put me into a place of contemplation about good old Virginia Woolf and her thing about having a "room of one's own." I think sister Alice serves up the truth about what is really needed if one is to write (or in the greater sense, be free to choose one's own path):

During the middle years of her career Zora was a cultural revolutionary simply because she was always herself. Her work, so vigorous among the other pallid productions of many of her contemporaries, comes from the essence of black folk life. During her later life she became so frightened of the life she had always dared bravely before. Her work too became reactionary, static, shockingly misguided and timid. (This is especially true of her last novel, Seraphs on the Sewanee, which is not even about black people, which is no crime, but is about white people for whom it is impossible to care, which is.)

A series of misfortunes battered Zora's spirit and her health. And she was broke.

Being broke made all the difference.

Without money of one's own in a capitalist society, there is no such thing as independence. This is one of the clearest lessons of Zora's life, and why I consider the telling her life a "cautionary tale." We must learn from it what we can.

Without money, an illness, even a simple one, can undermine the will. Without money, getting into a hospital is problematic and getting out without money to pay for the treatment is nearly impossible. Without money, one becomes dependent on other people, who are likely to be--even in their kindness--erratic in their support and despotic in their expectations of return. Zora was forced to rely, like Tennessee Willams' Blanche, "on the kindness of strangers." Can anything be more dangerous, if the strangers are forever in control? Zora, who worked so hard, was never able to make a living from her work.

...What is amazing is that Zora, who became an orphan at nine, a runaway at fourteen, a maid and manicurist (because of necessity and not from love of the work) before she was twenty--with one dress--managed to become Zora Neale Hurston, author and anthropologist, at all.

And so, when I think of all the belly-aching I've done in the past about my work, my task of balancing work and motherhood and writing, I reach back with my foot to kick my own self in the arse. Who am I to lament ANY source of income? Especially an income sufficient enough to support my craft of writing? Who am I to lament two lousy days worth of work (really one day since it's one twelve hour and one eight which is less than twenty-four) and five other days to do what I need to do? Who are we young writers today, to talk about "getting paid" when we have only a smitten's worth of output compared to Zora?

Of course, this essay was a re-read but there's nothing like re-reading to put a whole lot of things into focus.

Gratefully yours,

ANGEL