Zora and Me

Content Warning: This section discusses anti-Black racism, including lynching, in the Jim Crow South. 

“It’s funny how you can be in a story but not realize until the end that you were in one.”

The Power of Storytelling is central to Zora and Me. Carrie cannot know as the events of this book unfold that she is in a story, but by the end, she is able to look back and recontextualize her experiences as a major moment of growth and change in her own childhood and Zora Neale Hurston’s.

“Everyone was eager for a story, and we all knew that nobody could tell a story better than Zora.”

Zora’s storytelling abilities foreshadow the real Zora Neale Hurston’s literary career (See: Background). Even as a child, Zora has the storytelling skills that will one day mark her as one of the most successful writers of the Harlem Renaissance.

“‘All right, don’t believe me, then,’ Zora said. ‘But when all y’all coulda been playing kickball, you were standing around like boards listening to me. That alone is proof I’m telling the truth.’”

Zora believes in the power of storytelling to confer truth. If people are willing to listen to a story, she believes that must make her story true. Later, this belief will bolster her certainty that she is right about Mr. Pendir.