Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick

Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance

From “one of the greatest writers of our time” (Toni Morrison) the author of Barracoon and Their Eyes Were Watching God a collection of remarkable stories, including eight “lost” Harlem Renaissance tales now available to a wide audience for the first time.
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In 1925, Barnard student Zora Neale Hurston the sole black student at the college was living in New York, “desperately striving for a toe-hold on the world.” During this period, she began writing short works that captured the zeitgeist of African American life and transformed her into one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Nearly a century later, this singular talent is recognized as one of the most influential and revered American artists of the modern period.
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick is an outstanding collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, racism and sexism that proudly reflect African American folk culture. Brought together for the first time in one volume, they include eight of Hurston’s “lost” Harlem stories, which were found in forgotten periodicals and archives. These stories challenge conceptions of Hurston as an author of rural fiction and include gems that flash with her biting, satiric humor, as well as more serious tales reflective of the cultural currents of Hurston’s world. All are timeless classics that enrich our understanding and appreciation of this exceptional writer’s voice and her contributions to America’s literary traditions.
"For Zora Neale Hurston the Harlem Renaissance began in 1921, when she published her first short story, and it ended in 1937 with the publication of her masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God. In the period between, she wrote twenty-one stories, all of which appear here together in a single volume for the first time. Included in Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick are several “lost” Harlem Renaissance tales, eight of which challenge readers to rethink their assumptions about Hurston’s literary interests. An author long associated with the rural, with Eatonville, Florida, she wrote eight stories about northern cities and the Great Migration. She also wrote about Harlem’s middle class. Thus, this new Harlem Renaissance volume provides a much-needed correction to Hurston’s legacy and better reflects the true breadth of her subject matter."