Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick

Narrator Aunjanue Ellis takes the listener on a cultural journey as she delivers this collection of short stories by the iconic Harlem Renaissance writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. Both her humorous and serious tones and her use of Southern dialect show the breadth and depth of Hurston's cultural insights. These stories speak of love and survival in the African-American community. Ellis plays with Hurston's language and becomes members of the community as she delivers dialogue. She is the screechy grandmother; the spirited, rambunctious adolescent; and the melodramatic lover. Ellis's razor tongue shows up at the right times as she plays the dozens of secondary characters who make listeners feel like they are in the neighborhood witnessing a verbal brawl. When she delivers narrative, her steady pace gives each story drive as it moves to the next one. T.E.C. � AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine