Hurston, Zora N., and Langston Hughes. "Mule-Bone." The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David L. Lewis. New York: Viking Penguin, 1994. 729-38. Print.
I think that the irony of this play and the surrounding circumstances are phenomenal – the kind of thing you should only be able to find in fiction. And yet, as our text and other sources point out, it seems to have taken place in reality. The irony I’m talking about is, of course, that a play about overcoming intra-racial differences caused one of the largest and most fatal real-world splits intra-racially, at least as far as the Harlem Renaissance was concerned. Although the split between Hurston and Hughes was superficial and trivial in the larger scope of the Renaissance, it still managed to divide up blacks in Harlem into two camps, one supporting either of the play’s two authors. Perhaps it was fated to happen, if you believe in that kind of thing; a play that tempts the status quo intra-racially is, itself, the heart of an intra-racial divide. I’m not sure how many other ways there are to say this, but I can’t get over how sad and hilarious these circumstances are.
Now, with that aside, I thought that Mule-Bone was very ordinary compared to some of the other things we’ve read in this class, and certainly ordinary in comparison to other pieces by Hughes and, especially, Hurston. I am, actually, somewhat surprised that Hurston would have been involved in its writing. Her stances on equality as a perceived reality in her writings are somewhat at odds with this in-your-face pseudo-propaganda on intra-racial divide. Hughes, on the other hand, seems to fit the bill pretty well. Although, from what I’ve read, I would have expected a higher level of obvious pride in the work than what it offered. To me, Mule-Bone felt half-hearted, like the kind of thing a professional writer might doodle in their spare time and then forget away in some folder somewhere.
The moral of Mule-Bone, that the once-divided blacks can overcome whatever it is that is dividing them (I like the subtle commentary of using a woman instead of white society/racism – sexist much?) is fine and a bit overdone. The two once-divided black men reunite at the expense of the obstacle (symbolism 101) and order is restored to their lives. As I said, this is hardly the kind of work I would have associated with either of the authors, and I’m a bit upset that the ultimate divide between the two was over something so… plain.
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