Eight must-read novels: The enduring contributions of African American women writers
African American women writers have tackled the hard work of representing a diverse spectrum of lived and imagined experiences, including their own. Toni Morrison. | Philippe Wojazer/Reuters
In
Mules and Men (1935), anthropologist, creative writer and Harlem Renaissance upstart Zora Neale Hurston relays the evocative folktale “Why the Sister in Black Works Hardest.” Fatigued after the work of creation, god casts a massive bundle onto the earth. Intrigued by the mysterious object, a white Southern woman during the antebellum era asks her husband to retrieve it. Reluctant to tote the load himself, the master instructs a slave to fetch it.