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AfterwordVirnZora Neale Hurston:"A Negro Way of Saying"I.The Reverend Harry Middleton Hyatt, an Episcopal priest whosefive-volume classic collection, Hoodoo, Conjuration, Witchcraft,and Rootwork, more than amply returned an investment of fortyyears' research, once asked me during an interview in 1977 whathad become of another eccentric collector whom he admired. "Imet her in the field in the thirties. I think," he reflected for a fewseconds, "that her first name was Zora." It was an innocent question,made reasonable by the body of confused and often contradictoryrumors that make Zora Neale Hurston's own legend asrichly curious and as dense as are the black myths she did so muchto preserve in her classic anthropological works, Mules and Menand Tell My Horse, and in her fiction.A graduate of Barnard, where she studied under Franz Boas,Zora Neale Hurston published seven books—four novels, twobooks of folklore, and an autobiography—and more than fiftyshorter works between the middle of the Harlem Renaissance and