Fire!! : the Zora Neale Hurston story

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Title:

Fire!! : the Zora Neale Hurston story

Author:

Bagge, Peter author, illustrator.

ISBN:

9781770462694

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

71 pages, 30 unnumbered pages : color illustrations ; 23 cm.

Personal Subject:

Hurston, Zora Neale-Comic books, strips, etc.

Subject Term:

African American women novelists -- Biography -- Comic books, strips, etc.

African American women authors -- Biography -- Comic books, strips, etc.

Women folklorists -- United States -- Biography -- Comic books, strips, etc.

Genre:

Graphic novels.

Biographies

Summary:

"Peter Bagge has defied the expectations of the comics industry by changing gears from his famous slacker hero Buddy Bradley to documenting the life and times of historical 20th century trailblazers. If Bagge had not already had a New York Times bestseller with his biography of Margaret Sanger, his newest biography, Fire!!: The Zora Neale Hurston Story, would seem to be an unfathomable pairing of author and subject. Yet through Bagge's skilled cartooning, he turns what could be a rote biography into a bold and dazzling graphic novel, creating a story as brilliant as the life itself. Hurston challenged the norms of what was expected of an African American woman in early 20th century society. The fifth of eight kids from a Baptist family in Alabama, Hurston's writing prowess blossomed at Howard University, and then Barnard College, where she was the sole black student. She arrived in NYC at the height of the Harlem Renaissance and quickly found herself surrounded by peers such as Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman. Hurston went on to become a noted folklorist and critically acclaimed novelist, including her most provocative work Their Eyes Were Watching God. Despite these landmark achievements, personal tragedies and shifting political winds in the midcentury rendered her almost forgotten by the end of her life. With admiration and respect, Bagge reconstructs her vivid life in resounding full-color."--

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake)	GRAPHIC 921 HURSTON	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Oakdale Library	GRAPHIC 921 HURSTON	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Park Grove Library (Cottage Grove)	GRAPHIC 921 HURSTON	Searching... Unknown
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury)	GRAPHIC 921 HURSTON	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Stillwater Public Library	GRAPHIC 921 HURSTON	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Wildwood Library (Mahtomedi)	GRAPHIC 921 HURSTON	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

"It's irresistible to try and imagine what Hurston would make of this book, and inevitable to conclude that she'd approve."--NPR Best Books of 2017

A bold retelling of the life of the Their Eyes Were Watching God author

Peter Bagge has defied the expectations of the comics industry by changing gears from his famous slacker hero Buddy Bradley to documenting the life and times of historical 20th century trailblazers. If Bagge had not already had a New York Times bestseller with his biography of Margaret Sanger, his newest biography, Fire!!: The Zora Neale Hurston Story , would seem to be an unfathomable pairing of author and subject. Yet through Bagge's skilled cartooning, he turns what could be a rote biography into a bold and dazzling graphic novel, creating a story as brilliant as the life itself.

Hurston challenged the norms of what was expected of an African American woman in early 20th century society. The fifth of eight kids from a Baptist family in Alabama, Hurston's writing prowess blossomed at Howard University, and then Barnard College, where she was the sole black student. She arrived in NYC at the height of the Harlem Renaissance and quickly found herself surrounded by peers such as Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman.

Hurston went on to become a noted folklorist and critically acclaimed novelist, including her most provocative work Their Eyes Were Watching God . Despite these landmark achievements, personal tragedies and shifting political winds in the midcentury rendered her almost forgotten by the end of her life. With admiration and respect, Bagge reconstructs her vivid life in resounding full-color.

Author Notes

Peter Bagge is the 2014 USA Rockefeller Fellow in Literature. He is the Harvey Award-winning author of the acclaimed 1990s alternative comic series Hate starring slacker hero Buddy Bradley and a contributing editor to Reason magazine. A graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York City, he got his start in comics in the R. Crumb-edited magazine Weirdo. Bagge lives in Seattle with his wife Joanne, daughter, and three cats.

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Bagge follows his previous graphic novel, Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story, with another portrait of an iconoclastic American woman. Raised in an all-black farming town before attending Howard University, Hurston became a celebrated writer and anthropologist but clashed politically with much of the black intellectual community up north. Bagge depicts her life in his iconic spaghetti-limbed, cheery-colored cartoon style. He has a frustrating tendency to hurry through the material, though: Hurston decides to launch the literary magazine Fire!! with her friends, only to be shown closing up shop on the next page, and goes from considering a marriage proposal to the thick of her first marriage in two panels. It's easy to see what attracted Bagge to the material: brilliant, outrageous, prone to visions and mysticism yet fiercely pragmatic, Hurston is an irresistible character, and Bagge's extensive, opinionated endnotes attest to his fascination. But better focus and pacing would give needed structure to Hurston's freewheeling life. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Novelist and folklorist Hurston was prone to towering rage, especially in her youth, when, for instance, she whaled the tar out of her father's presumptuous young second wife. That alone makes her a fitting subject for the talents of the man who created volatile Buddy Bradley, hero of Hate comics. Like Buddy, Hurston was too impulsive to restrain herself and too smart not to feel sorry. Fiercely intelligent and self-motivating, quite fearless but not foolhardy, she managed to make herself college-educated, a successful field anthropologist in Haiti and Jamaica as well as her native Florida, and, as the author of some of the highest esteemed fiction to come out of it, a star of the Harlem Renaissance. Although very close to Langston Hughes, she eventually fell out with him over his Communist-influenced radicalism; indeed, her individualism and roots-community orientation led her to scorn, controversially, government-directed racial integration. She retained a fatal-to-her-pocketbook love of the theater (another bosom friend was Ethel Waters), and she loved to party. What Bagge can't show of Hurston's life, he writes up in a photo-illustrated biographical essay keyed by page numbers to the comic's main text. His bright, cyclonic art, equally colorful dialogue (a pale reduction of Hurston's style, he thinks), and thoughtful, personally invested commentary constitute a moving, funny, and serious introduction to a larger-than-life literary figure.--Olson, Ray Copyright 2017 Booklist

Library Journal Review

Meet Zora Neale Hurston: anthropologist who worked with Franz Boas, folklorist and collector of down-home speech and stories with Alan Lomax, novelist (Their Eyes Were Watching God), essayist and playwright, eccentric intellectual, life of the party, and exotic fashionista. Bagge bends manic, rubbery characters around Hurston's chutzpah for a warts-and-roses portrait of this fascinating woman who stirred up controversy in the Harlem Renaissance and beyond. (LJ 4/1/17) © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Booklist Review

Library Journal Review

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