Editors Reads Verdict
Mules and Men is one of the most unusual books in American literary history — a work of scholarship that is also a work of literature, in which the method of collection is inseparable from the material collected, and the collector is always visible in the frame.
What We Loved
- The frame narrative — Hurston visible in the process of collection — is a model of reflexive anthropology
- The tales themselves are extraordinary: funny, strange, morally complex
- The voodoo section is the most thorough and sympathetic account available in American nonfiction
- Hurston's prose makes the academic material fully accessible without condescension
Minor Drawbacks
- The scholarly apparatus can feel intrusive for readers primarily interested in the literary experience
- Some tales require contextual knowledge of Southern Black community life to fully appreciate
- The collection's organisation is less systematic than the material might warrant
Key Takeaways
- → Folklore is not naive; it is a sophisticated cultural technology for carrying meaning across generations
- → The researcher who returns to her own community occupies a different position from the outside observer — more access, different blindspots
- → Voodoo is a coherent spiritual system, not the superstition that white American culture characterised it as
- → Black Southern oral culture was a literature before it was collected — Hurston's work is preservation, not discovery
| Author | Zora Neale Hurston |
|---|---|
| Publisher | HarperPerennial |
| Pages | 352 |
| Published | October 1, 1935 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Folklore, African American Literature, Anthropology |
Mules and Men Review
Mules and Men was published in 1935 with a preface by Franz Boas, Hurston’s anthropological mentor at Barnard, and an introduction by Hurston herself that is one of the most elegant accounts of a fieldworker’s method and purpose in twentieth-century nonfiction. The book collected folklore during two extended fieldwork trips — one to Eatonville, Florida and the surrounding communities, one to New Orleans — and presented the material inside a frame narrative that showed how the collection happened: who told what story, in what context, with what response from the community.
This frame narrative is Hurston’s most important methodological and literary innovation. Earlier collectors of Black Southern folklore — most of them white scholars — had presented the material decontextualised, stripped of the social life that gave it meaning and function, as if the tales existed independently of the people who told them. Hurston’s frame restores the context: she returns to Eatonville as a neighbour rather than a researcher, is accepted on those terms, and records what people tell her in the places and situations where they tell it. The tales are embedded in scenes of community life — on the porch, at the jook joint, during work — and the scenes are as important as the tales.
The tales themselves are the riches that the book’s reputation rests on. The John and the Devil cycle — in which a Black man outsmarts the Devil repeatedly, usually through wit and verbal dexterity — is presented across multiple variants, each variant illuminating what the others leave in the shadows. The animal tales, the creation stories, the tales of origin for racial difference — all of them are sophisticated cultural technologies, doing the work that a community without access to institutional power does through narrative: preserving memory, encoding values, processing grievance, maintaining dignity.
The second half of the book, covering Hurston’s time in New Orleans learning voodoo under a series of hoodoo doctors, is the most unusual and the most contentious section — the first extended sympathetic account of voodoo as a coherent spiritual system rather than a dangerous superstition in American nonfiction. Mules and Men is simultaneously a work of scholarly anthropology, a work of literary nonfiction, and a statement about the intellectual and cultural sophistication of a community that white American culture had systematically undervalued.
Our rating: 4.3/5 — One of the most unusual and valuable books in American literary history — essential for understanding Hurston, the Harlem Renaissance, and Southern Black oral culture.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "Mules and Men" about?
Hurston's collection of Southern Black folklore — gathered during fieldwork in Florida and Louisiana in the early 1930s — is both a scholarly work of anthropology and a literary performance. The tales, sayings, and voodoo practices are presented inside a frame narrative that shows how the material was collected.
What are the key takeaways from "Mules and Men"?
Folklore is not naive; it is a sophisticated cultural technology for carrying meaning across generations The researcher who returns to her own community occupies a different position from the outside observer — more access, different blindspots Voodoo is a coherent spiritual system, not the superstition that white American culture characterised it as Black Southern oral culture was a literature before it was collected — Hurston's work is preservation, not discovery
Is "Mules and Men" worth reading?
Mules and Men is one of the most unusual books in American literary history — a work of scholarship that is also a work of literature, in which the method of collection is inseparable from the material collected, and the collector is always visible in the frame.
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