the various modes of their oppression” (Carby,
303). This environment placed great stress on the
African-American woman, as racial uplift ideol-
ogy demanded a certain social conservatism and
adherence to domesticity, marriage, and mother-
hood. In her diary, Dunbar-Nelson uses a distinct
and original voice not found in her public literary
pursuits. She reveals the details of financial stresses
of the black middle class, which was based more
on education and breeding than money. She also
bares her personal doubts and fear regarding her
talents as a writer and lack of success with publi-
cations. Most illuminating, she exposes an active
black lesbian network of which she was a member.
The diary ends with the appointment of Nelson
to a government position, a welcome relief from
financial precariousness.
Alice Dunbar-Nelson died on September 18,
1935, of heart trouble. Only recently has her repu-
tation as a talented writer been rescued from the
shadows of her famous first husband.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alexander, Eleanor. Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow:
The Tragic Courtship and Marriage of Paul Lau-
rence Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore. New York:
New York University Press, 2001.
Carby, Hazel. “On the Threshold of Woman’s Era:
Lynching, Empire, and Sexuality in Black Feminist
Theory.” In “Race,” Writing, and Difference, edited
by Henry L. Gates, 301–316. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1986.
Hull, Gloria T. Color, Sex, and Poetry: Three Women
Writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1987.
———, ed. The Works of Alice Dunbar-Nelson. 3 vols.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Adenike Marie Davidson
Dust Tracks on a Road
Zora Neale Hurston (1942)
ZORA NEALE HURSTON took the title for her auto-
biography, Dust Tracks on a Road, from a folk say-
ing she often heard as a child from her mother.
Blending autobiographical narrative, essay, folk-
loric elements, and double-voiced discourse, Hur-
ston addresses a range of topics—her childhood,
family, love, friendship, race, research, religion,
and many of her own publications. She poetically
and uniquely lays out her purpose for writing
Dust Tracks when she writes, “I have memories
within that come out of the material that went to
make me.... So you will have to know something
about the time and place where I came from, in
order that you may interpret the incidents and
directions of my life” (11). She proceeds, at the
beginning of Dust Tracks, to provide a vivid back-
ground about the place of her birth, the all-black
town of Eatonville, Florida, and immediately situ-
ates herself in a place and time of historical and
cultural significance.
In Chapter 2, “My Folks,” Hurston introduces
her parents and sets the stage for her own birth
in Chapter 3, “I Get Born,” where she emerges as
a mystical, bright, imaginative, determined child
in tune with her environment and surrounded
by the people who helped shape her personal-
ity. Chapter 4, “The Inside Search,” describes
the world of Zora’s inquisitive young mind, and
Chapter 5, “Figure and Fancy,” highlights the folk
culture of Joe Clarke’s storefront porch with its
“lying sessions”—which became a central meta-
phor in her collected work. Chapter 6, “Wan-
dering,” presents a heart-wrenching account of
the death of Hurston’s mother, while Chapter 7,
“Jacksonville and After,” recounts the constant
bickering with her stepmother, which ultimately
drives her away from home and into a new world
of adventure and success.
The remaining chapters in Dust Tracks provide
an engaging portrait of Hurston as a woman who
is continually in the process of asserting her own
authenticity. Chapters 8 through 10, “Backstage
and the Railroad,” “School Again,” and “Research,”
depict Hurston’s endless struggle to survive on her
own, to refine herself, and to pursue her creative
interests. She writes at the beginning of “Back-
stage and Railroad,” “There is something about
poverty that smells like death. Dead leaves drop-
ping off the heart like leaves in a dry season and
rotting around the feet” (116). In “Research” Hur-
ston boldly confesses, “In New Orleans, I delvedDust Tracks on a Road 159