Читать книгу Constructing the Self. Essays on Southern Life-Writing онлайн

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Note that Hurston privileges this white man’s intervention over her own mother’s birth pains. In fact, her mother almost disappears from the narrative, in spite of the fact that she is the one who gave birth. The person truly responsible for her survival at this point, Hurston implies, is the white godfather. From this auspicious beginning, therefore, Hurston makes it clear that she is not just some common colored person born in the country in Florida. Instead, her beginnings are legendary, almost mythical, which means that she is unlike the run of the mill average black person. She also makes it clear by presenting this man as being in her life for a number of years, even using the word “nigger” with her, that she is not going to spend her narrative castigating southern whites.

The exceptionalism that characterizes Hurston’s birth continues throughout her narrative. Two white women from the North select her as the student upon whom to bestow special favors, including giving her a cylinder of 100 shiny new pennies after she reads for them and sending her clothes from the North for an extended period after that. She recounts her visit to the women in their hotel room in Eatonville: