Spunk: A Play

by Zora Neale Hurston, Katrina Thomas (Editor)

"Spunk" is Zora Neale Hurston's last drama. It was adapted from her award winning short story of the same name. The short story “Spunk” by Zora Neale Hurston was first published in Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life in June 1925 after taking 2nd place in a literary contest. It was later published in a prominent anthology of essays, poems and fiction pieces called The New Negro: An Interpretation (1925), featuring pieces from some of the best Harlem Renaissance writers, including Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Dubois, and James Weldon Johnson. In 1985, “Spunk” was included in a collection of her short stories. It was given the name Spunk: Selected Short Stories. Ten years after the original publication of the short story, Hurston registered the three-act muscial entitled Spunk (1935) for copyright, with the intention of future publication and production, but it had never seen the stage within her lifetime.

In a small town in Florida, Spunk decides that Evelina (Lina), wife of Jim, is his woman. The entire town watches as Lina leaves her home to live with Spunk. After months of turmoil, Jim cannot handle seeing Spunk parade his wife around town. As Jim snaps, only one man lives, and Lina must now deal with its consequences.

Genres: School, Short Stories, African American, Female Authors, Theatre, Plays, Fiction

93 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 28, 2016

About the author

Novels, including Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and nonfiction writings of American folklorist Zora Neale Hurston give detailed accounts of African American life in the South.

In 1925, Hurston, one of the leaders of the literary renaissance, happening in Harlem, produced the short-lived literary magazine Fire!! alongside Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman shortly before she entered Barnard College. This literary movement developed into the Harlem renaissance.

Hurston applied her Barnard ethnographic training to document African American folklore in her critically acclaimed book Mules and Men alongside fiction Their Eyes Were Watching God . She also assembled a folk-based performance dance group that recreated her Southern tableau with one performance on Broadway.

People awarded a Guggenheim fellowship to Hurston to travel to Haiti and conduct research on conjure in 1937. Her significant work ably broke into the secret societies and exposed their use of drugs to create the Vodun trance, also a subject of study for fellow dancer-anthropologist Katherine Dunham, then at the University of Chicago.

In 1954, the Pittsburgh Courier assigned Hurston, unable to sell her fiction, to cover the small-town murder trial of Ruby McCollum, the prosperous black wife of the local lottery racketeer, who had killed a racist white doctor. Hurston also contributed to Woman in the Suwanee County Jail , a book by journalist and civil rights advocate William Bradford Huie.

Reviews

[Chrissie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here follows a free online link to the story Spunk: https://biblioklept.org/2015/02/10/re...

My rating is of the one story entitled "Spunk".

Yeah, I like this, but I do not find its message all that revolutionary. People rarely dare to oppose or even speak up against the strong, those in power or those they fear. Few have the guts to do this. Perhaps it is quite simply that most are too lackadaisical. Few will fight for a principle they say they think is right. If there is a chance they might suffer as a consequence, that they take should take an opposing stand is even slimmer.

The story touches upon what true courage is, but again what is said here has been said before. I agree with Walter that Joe is braver than Spunk.

Superstitions are woven into the story in a believable manner.

I always appreciate that the author writes dialogs in dialect. I do not find the dialect difficult to comprehend; you merely have to think how the words would sound.

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

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The rating, any status updates, and those bookshelves, indicate my feelings for this book.

[Sincerae Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read only the short story Spunk in another addition of Zora Neale Hurston's works. I enjoyed Hurston's use of old African-American southern dialect.

[Dawn (& Ron) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Buddy read with Chrissie.

I was curious to learn why and how the word spunk was used as the title. I was surprised that it was the name of our main character but not surprised that a word that can mean both courage and audacity was used for this story. One in which the reader is left wondering who is brave (or even what is bravery), who is right who is wrong, who is strong who is weak.

This is only my 2nd Hurston read and it was very easy and comforting to step back into her dialect and amazing dialog.
"he ain’t skeered of nothin‘ on God’s green footstool" The dialog is the star of this short story, it shines and brings Hurston's world to life but there are aspects that just aren't as strong, maybe a longer narrative could have allowed for a more immersing read.

One other item of interest is the sawmill that is integral to the story. We live about 20 minutes from Eatonville and there is an old sawmill centrally located that whenever I pass it in the future I will wonder if I see Joe and whether this is the same mill Hurston used for this story.

[Bookish · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found Spunk to be an okay read. A story I could pass a few minutes with and enjoy a bit of dialect but that's about it. It was just too obvious. I went back to see if perhaps Elijah could've killed Spunk in some elaborate scheme to get Lena which might've been concealed in the subtext of his goading Joe but that doesn't seem to be it. Lena comes off as a sack of meat being competed for by a bunch of men who simultaneously resent Spunk's physicality and its threat to the societal conventions of owning your partner, while perhaps wanting a bit of that for themselves.

[Greta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spunk is a collection of short stories by Zora Neale Hurston, a wonderful master of idiom from central Florida in the early 20th century. The stories she tells aren't long or complicated, just down to earth and often highly entertaining. My husband read these out loud to me at bedtime and they were great.

[darla!! ur mom · Rating 5 out of 5]

ate

[Aimee Leigh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nice short story, the message about toxic stereotypes of masculinity were nice and clear, but couldn’t she have chosen another name for the bloke? Spunk Banks seems like some kind of torturous joke, particularly when teaching this story to 13/14yr olds who can’t even handle it when you ask them to turn to page 69 🤦🏻‍♀️

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the warmth and breadth of characters Zora Neale Hurston highlights. Gilded Sixbits was my favorite short story. It could have easily been a predictable outcome but instead she chose to tell a more human story, a person delighted with their lot in life despite hardships.

[Becky Osmon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Master class in story telling

[Elizabeth Hren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. The ending was awesome

[Octavia]

Excellent. There’s an essay here about black plays and self-narration & third person (see also: brothers size)

[Anna Radzinski · Rating 4 out of 5]

we need to start making classic literature into movies again. this one first

[Layla · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was required reading for a university course. Some of it was hard to follow (due to all the slang) but the stories are sure to incite some interesting discussion.