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"Sis Cat" as Ethnographer: Self-Presentation and
Self-Inscription in Zora Neale Hurston's Mules
and Men
606 AFRICANAMERICAN
REVIEW
What Barbara Christian has said of
Hurston's 1937 novel TheirEyes Were
Watching God seems equally pertinent
to Mules and Men, the first published
book-length work of anthropology by
a Black woman. Both Janie Crawford
of the novel and the I of Hurston the
real-world anthropologist "radically
envision the self as central" (Christian
175). Janie's empowering attainment
of self-revelation through narrative,
which provides both the occasion for,
and the structure of, the novel is a par-
adigm for the real-world ethnogra-
pher as well (Wall 661). It is this narra-
tive trajectory which has made
Hurston's anthropology the target of
yet another kind of critical misunder-
standing: outright invective from her
contemporary male critics, who ques-
tioned her objectivity, as well as her
scientific and academic qualifications.
Mules and Men is, at first glance, a
collection of seventy African-Ameri-
can folktales recorded by Hurston on
several extended "expeditions" to the
American South under the auspices of
the Department of Anthropology at
Columbia University and under the
conflict-ridden patronage of Mrs.
textual appurtenances of a scholarly Fig. 1. Photo-
work of social science.7 Yet, for all graph of Zora
Rufus Osgood Mason.6 The work, Neale
taHurtondSreslan
thstU is more tha the merely by CarlHurston
Van
written on her return to New York be-
obsering nd reortig preence Vechten.Yale
tween March 1930 and September
which orthodox ethnography de- Collection of
1932, and only eventually published
in 1935, is divided into two parts, manded of her. She is a central partici- American
"Folk Tales" and "Hoodoo." On its ini- pant in the story-telling contests of Literature,
rural Florida and the conjure rituals of Beinecke Rare
tial publication, the first part gave a Book and
general readership insights into the New Orleans. Manuscript
oral transmission of often highly sub- Hurston's presentation of herself Library,Yale
versive folk tales and songs. The sec- as an acting force (who assumes a va- University.
ond part details the occult rituals and riety of identities) -that is, one who Reprintedwith
folk medicine practices of the conjure does, not merely looks-seemed prob- the permission
lematic to readers expecting a stan- of CarlVsane
artists of New Orleans. It is a work of
anthropology, in its finished form, by dard work of ethnography. Her first Vechten.
virtue of its glossary, appendices, pref- critics believed the book was good
ace by another authoritative anthro- //entertainment" and could therefore
pologist (in this case Franz Boas, not merit consideration as a scientific
Hurston's mentor), and footnotes document. 8Arna Bontemps said of
which explain such exotic words as her writings that it was impossible to
chitterlingsand doodleysquat. In short, tell where the anthropology "~leftoff
it contains many of the conventional and where Zora began" (qtd. in
610 AFRICANAMERICAN
REVIEW
subjective presence of the ethnogra- the townspeople introduce and name
pher is privileged in many different her to the reader, thereby making
ways. "Zora Hurston" the subject of the
For example, she is actively work. As she rolls into Eatonville in
sought out by her informants, the sto- her Chevrolet, "They looked up from
rytellers, instead of the reverse, which the game and for a moment it looked
is the norm in anthropological field as if they had forgotten me. Then B.
study. A character in her home town
Moseley said, 'Well if it ain't Zora
of Eatonville, Florida, remarks that
Hurston!' Then everybody crowded
Hurston looks as if she's bored by
around the car to help greet me" (23).
what she is hearing, and he urges the
rest of the group to tell better stories, They eagerly ask her how long she
or "lies" as they are called, in order to plans to stay among them and with
hold her interest: "Zora's gittin' rest- whom she plans to stay. She allows
less. She think she ain't gointer hear her informants to comment on her po-
no more" (43). At the opening of the tentially disruptive presence in Eaton-
second chapter, Eatonville storytellers ville: ' 'No, Zora ain't goin' nowhere
such as George Thomas and Charlie wid my husband,' Clara announced.
Jones appeal to her to come and listen: 'If he got anything to tell her-it's
gointer be right here in front of me'
"Zora,"GeorgeThomasinformedme,
"you come to de right place if lies is
(55). And the great disparity between
what you want. Ah'm gointer lie up her initial identity as an "insider"
a nation." Charlie Jones said, "Yeah who is named to the reader by her
man Me an my sworn buddy Gene own townspeople and her later one as
Brazzleis here. Big Moose done come
down from de mountaini' "Now, you a threatening "outsider" who, after
gointer hear lies above suspicion," leaving the security of Eatonville,
Gene added. (37) must work to establish her legitimacy
as an "insider" in Polk County is the
It is almost as if her presence is re-
focus of much of her commentary.
quired for this rich oral culture to
This is especially vivid in the descrip-
come into being. In the introduction
to the work she writes, "Here in tions of her incongruously urban ap-
Eatonville I knew everybody was pearance when she first arrives in the
going to help me" collect the folktales lumber camps to gather folklore (89-
which form the basis of her study (19). 90). Her "arrival story" in Loughman,
A standard trope of ethnography, Polk County, is fancifully delivered as
as Carl G. Herndl recently pointed she and her "little Chevrolet" together
out, is " 'the arrival story,' the poetic form a "we" who "debate" where to
description of the ethnographer enter- go (85) and may have made the
ing the native scene. This trope estab- wrong decision:
lishes the fieldworker's presence, au-
That night the place was full of
thorizes her account, and then allows men-come to look over the new
her to recede from" the description addition to the quarters. Very little
that follows, subsequently suppress- was said directly to me and when I
ing "the writer's genuine participa- tried to be friendly there was a no-
tion throughout the remainder of the ticeable disposition to fend me off.
text in order to establish the 'scien- This worried me because I saw at
tific' authority of the 'observation'" once that this group of several hun-
dred Negroes from all over the
(325). Hurston revels in her own "ar- South was rich field for folk-lore,
rival stories," without, however, sub- but here I was figuratively starving
sequently fading into the background. to death in the midst of plenty. (85-
At the very opening of Mules and Men, 86)
612 AFRICANAMERICAN
REVIEW
(illustrated in a highly stylized Art self, functioning as the final story-tell-
Deco depiction by the book's illustr- ing voice in the collection, concludes
ator, Miguel Covarrubias, of contem- the book, just as she began, with a
porary Vanity Fair fame). She is re- folk myth. This story also has rele-
named "The Rain-Bringer" by a con- vance to Hurston's identity as a cre-
jure artist, Luke Turner, a supposed ative artist and ethnographer. The
nephew of Marie Leveau, who paints tale, which functions as an epilogue,
a yellow lightning symbol down her recounts the reason for cats' washing
back "from my right shoulder to my themselves after they eat, rather than
left hip. This was to be my sign for- before. After being hoodwinked by
ever. The Great One was to speak to the rat (here functioning as a male
me in storms" (249). Her face is also trickster figure) as she was about to
decorated with a symbolic sun and a eat him, Sis Cat learns from experi-
pair of iconographic eyes as part of ence that she must eat the rat while
the ceremony, as a result of which she she has him in her clutches and worry
is worthy to be "taken by the Spirit." later about the polite niceties of wash-
Hurston's critics have noted that ing herself. The story ends this way:
all this emphasis on the self placing it- So de cat caught herself a rat
self in sensationalized roles strains the again and set down to eat. So de Rat
credulity of readers expecting rigor- said, "Where's yo' manners at, Sis
Cat? You going to eat 'thout wash-
ous social science. But they miss the ing yo' face and hands?"
point that Geertz makes in his essay ti- "Oh, Ah got plenty manners," de
tled "Blurred Genres: The Refigura- cat told 'im. "But Ah eats mah din-
tion of Social Thought." The acknowl- ner and washes mah face and uses
mah manners afterwards."So she et
edgment that no discourse is generi- right on 'im and washed her face
cally pure has meant "a challenge is and hands. And cat's been washin'
being mounted to some of the central after eatin' ever since. (304)
assumptions of mainstream social sci- I think it's significant that this final
ence. The strict separation of theory
story should be about female empow-
and data, the 'brute fact' idea, the ef- erment through experience, wit, and
fort to create ... analysis purged of all independent and unconventional
subjective reference" in anthropology thought and behavior. Moreover,
texts was always illusory (Local34). Hurston appropriates the story for her
The value of Hurston's work is that it own final act of self-inscription, as-
helps us recognize this. The suming Sis Cat's identity in the final
metaphorizing tendencies of more re- paragraph of her ethnography and ex-
cent ethnography, as if anthropolo- pressing it in the vernacular: "I'm sit-
gists were as much steeped in poetry ting here like Sis Cat, washing my
and drama as social science, as Geertz face and usin' my manners" (304).
has noted in Worksand Lives, are pres- Adopting this feline persona, Hurston
ent in Mules and Men to a degree that has, in essence, compared herself to a
would not unduly disturb such social folktale character, one eminently wor-
scientists as Victor Turner and Alton thy of emulation. Hence, Mules and
Becker. They have refigured social Men ends on a creatively affirmative
thought along such models as "life-as- act of self-mythification.
theatre" and "life-as-game" respec-
tively (Local23).
Hurston's ludic tendency to H urston'scontributionto the
metaphorize the ethnographer's iden- process of "blurring genres" in
tity reaches its final apotheosis in Mules and Men is, I hope I have shown,
Mules and Men when the author her- of the greatest significance. Yet, in the
SELF-INSCRIPTION
INHURSTON'S
MULESANDMEN 613
final analysis, it is not so surprising. her culture and race as the Bible was
She did so for expressive and personal to the white male colonists of seven-
reasons, but also as a way of subvert- teenth-century New England.
ing pernicious racist assumptions by Hurston's ethnographic work gave
social scientists and their "fictions" her the power to "tell stories because
about her people. Many recent femi- in the act of writing down the old
nist critics have noted the tendency in 'lies,' Hurston created a bridge be-
African-American women's writing to tween the 'primitive' authority of folk
elude definitional or generic specific- life and the literary power of written
ity, much as Hurston herself does in texts" (11). In Mules and Men Hurston
the photograph reproduced on p. 607. invested herself with what Pryse calls
BarbaraJohnson has expressed this the "magic of authority" (12) that
idea well when writing apropos of makes storytelling possible. To tell a
TheirEyes WereWatching God: different story from that told by her
contemporary social scientists-this
The inside/outside boundariesbe- was the imperative of Hurston's eth-
tween characterand narrator,be-
tween standardand individual,are nographic work.
both transgressedand preserved, While Hurston "blurred genres"
makingit impossibleto identifyand to celebrate and valorize both her
totalizeeitherthesubjectorthenature own identity and that of her culture,
of the discourse(218). other social scientists, using strenu-
Astute critics have commented on ously "scientific" writing, usually der-
this aspect of Hurston's fiction. I think ogated African-American culture as
it is possible to see the same transgres- pathological, if they acknowledged
sions enriching Mules and Men, as the existence of an autonomous cul-
well. Her final assumption of a feline ture at all. Let me cite just one of
identity, Sis Cat, is the culmination of many egregious examples to show the
an empowering self-transformation degree to which Hurston's brand of
throughout the course of the work ethnography stood in oppositional re-
which takes on a palpably magic-like lation to what was supposedly ratio-
character. With this power, Hurston nal, objective Establishment Social Sci-
has assumed the authority to speak, ence in the 1930s. The preeminent soci-
as an ethnographer, for her people in ologist E. Franklin Frazier, as John F.
a way that can, in turn, empower her Szwed has stated, used racist statisti-
subjects. Majorie Pryse has stated cal surveys in his field research which
that Hurston was a key figure in the lacked "any ethnographically-based
assertion of a self-conscious and pow- insight into black life," while his work
erful "voice" in African-American cul- described African-American commu-
ture and women's writing: nities as "disorganized and culturally
non-adaptive" (Szwed 159). In a study
By writingdown blackfolklorein a entitled "Traditions and Patterns of
formthat made it accessiblefor the Negro Family Life in the United
firsttimetogeneralreaders[she]called
anabrupthaltto theculturalattitude States," published the year before
thatexcludedblackwomenfromlit- Mules and Men, Frazier concluded:
eraturebecauseitexcludedthemfrom
otherkindsof power.MulesandMen Tobe sure,whenone undertakesthe
used the power of the writtentext study of the Negro he discoversa
itselfas formof magic.(11) greatpovertyof traditionsand pat-
terns of behaviorthat exerciseany
Pryse goes on to echo Alice Walker's realinfluenceon theformationof the
Negro'spersonalityand conduct.If
establishment of Hurston as a 'found- . . . the moststrikingthingaboutthe
ing mother" of an African-American Chineseis theirdeepculture, themost
women's literary tradition, as vital to conspicuousthing aboutthe Negro
614 AFRICANAMERICAN
REVIEW
is his lack of a culture. (qtd. inSzwed the subject of ethnography and its au-
159) dience, which Geertz has posited as a
As Szwed points out, the estab- necessary concomitant of
lished consensus of American social postcolonial anthropology. The be-
scientists between the wars, and well lief that ethnographic 'subjects
into the 1960s,11 was that African- were to be described but not ad-
Americans were part of "a deficit cul- dressed, or the audience informed
ture, a kind of negative culture exist- but not implicated" (Works132) is a
ing in the absence of a real one" (160). normative value of traditional anthro-
Positioning itself in the interstices of pology which Hurston did not, and
this Establishment edifice, Hurston's could not, embody. From a purely rhe-
Mules and Men was the first full- torical standpoint, Mules and Men is a
length work to give the lie to "scien- fully persuasive work of ethnogra-
tific" consensus, arguing for the per- phy. As Mary Helen Washington has
sistence and continuity of a distinctive movingly attested of its fundamental
African-American culture and tradi- truth value,
tion. She did this even before such rel- The tales are set in the framework of
atively enlightened social scientists as a story in which Hurston herself is a
fellow Boas student Melville character.The other characters,who
Herskovits (TheMythof theNegroPast, in conventional folklore collections
1941) and linguist Lorenzo D. Turner are merely informants, are real per-
sonalities inMules andMen,exposing
in theGullahDialect,
(Africanisms their prejudices, love affairs,jealous-
1949). Hurston's ethnography is signif- ies .... She saw black lives as psy-
icant because it portrays a highly actu- chologically integral-not half-lives,
alized culture creating and passing on stunted by the effects of racism and
poverty. (Washington, Introduction
richly distinctive narrative and ritual 14)
traditions.
Sis Cat successfully broke free of On a personal level, too,
her mentor's dictates that the ethnog- Hurston's self-transformative poses-
rapher distance herself from her sub- from "Zora Hurston" of Eatonville to
jects. 'The emancipation from our 'The Rain-Bringer" of New Orleans
own culture, demanded of the anthro- to her final assertions of professional
pologist, is not easily attained," Boas accomplishment and personal power
wrote in 1928, the year after Hurston's as Sis Cat-trace, in Cheryl A. Wall's
first return to her Eatonville home as apt words, "the journey of the artist
a field researcher, 'because we are who travels both to the matrix of the
only too apt to consider the behavior culture and to the deepest regions of her
in which we are bred as natural for all self. Having completed this dual jour-
mankind, as one that must necessarily ney, she is empowered to tell her
develop everywhere" (202). Hurston story to the world" (676). Signifi-
surely sensed that an African-Ameri- cantly, Zora Neale Hurston's transmu-
can woman valorizing herself and her tation of social science in Mules and
people had nothing to gain, and every- Men embodies Stephen A. Tyler's
thing to lose, by emancipating herself marvelously apt description of eth-
from her own culture via Boas's ideal- nography: "an occult document...
ized tenets of "rigid, objective an enigmatic, paradoxical, and eso-
study" (204). Thus Hurston was teric conjunction of reality and fan-
the first to close the gap between tasy" (qtd. in Geertz, Works137).
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SELF-INSCRIPTION MULESANDMEN
INHURSTON'S 617