Yuval Taylor

Zora and Langston by Yuval Taylor gets 4/5 stars. Things got bogged down in the details near the book’s end and disrupted the flow. Miscommunications and letters crossing in the mail made the story difficult to follow. Overall, I enjoyed this gossipy read. Several reviewers commented that Taylor’s book is nothing more than a term paper on the topic, taken generously from other sources. It is a cursory look, but I’m fine with that. I’m not writing a dissertation or trying to be a historian. If the book’s tone were academic, I would’ve lost interest and abandoned it altogether. As it is, I learned many things I didn’t know, got insight into 2 of America’s greatest writers, and learned about the Harlem Renaissance, 10-15 years when Black Unicorns ruled the literary creative landscape. Zora and Langston were seemingly cut from the same cloth in their independence, genius, and desire to be exactly who they were. Perhaps this is what attracted them to each other. They traveled together, worked together, and had many great adventures together. Apparently even 100 years ago, black people were up for telling other black people what it meant to be black, what to write about, and how to act. Neither Langston nor Zora was having it, and perhaps this made them simpatico.

One disappointing (yet typical) aspect of L&Z’s history is that the men sided with Langston after L&Z fell out, and it got ugly. Men have insulted and discredited women's creations for millennia, so why I was surprised to see this is beyond me. I guess I thought there was a spirit of comradery. Some of the more influential men were misogynist to begin with; certainly there was nothing Zora could do right to them. I’m happy that Zora's work thrives while her haters remain obscure at best.

It’s easy to turn up my nose at the relationships both Zora and Langston had with the anti-Semitic, racist Charlotte Osgood Mason, who financially sponsored both writers for many years, albeit with her own agenda. Her patronage definitely came with strings attached, but perhaps in the 1920s as well as before, during, and after the Depression it was a worthy trade. It allowed Z&L to survive and focus on their writing. Things weren't like they are now when one can work a day job to make ends meet and write during evenings and weekends. In my mind, the Harlem Renaissance was a magical time when black artists created and thrived and were recognized for their gifts. This book dulled the shine of the period for me and showed that people were merely people, just as we are now.

Apparently quite a few artists during the Harlem Renaissance became members of the Communist Party, no doubt because any political ideology that had equality as a basic tenet was bound to be attractive to black folks. But later on they found out it was another lie; the Communist Party for whatever reason abandoned its earlier promises to African Americans, and guess who suffered for it.

The book could have benefitted from a listed chronology of events, even though it was written chronologically. I like to see at a glance who were contemporaries and when certain things occurred in relation to other events. Also more photos would’ve been nice. Useful resources for further exploration include chapter notes, further readings, and an index, always handy.

Although Zora and Langston disappointed my expectations for the Harlem Renaissance and its luminaries in several ways, the writing is what matters most. We will always have these authors’ work.… (mer)