Recommendations
Books Like Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston
For readers of the self-invented Harlem Renaissance autobiography
If you loved Dust Tracks on a Road — Hurston's performative, evasive, opinionated autobiography and her portrait of Eatonville — these books share the same interest in African American autobiography, the same engagement with the question of how Black writers present themselves to the world, and the same roots in the specific culture of the Black South.
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Buy on AmazonTheir Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston
The essential companion and Hurston's masterpiece — the fiction that emerges from the autobiography; Janie Crawford's quest for selfhood is the fictional transformation of the self-invention Hurston performs in Dust Tracks on a Road.
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Buy on AmazonI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
by Maya Angelou
Angelou's autobiography — the companion in African American women's autobiography about a Southern childhood and a self-invented identity; Angelou's Stamps, Arkansas is the companion to Hurston's Eatonville, Florida.
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Buy on AmazonThe Autobiography of Malcolm X
by Malcolm X
Malcolm X's autobiography — the companion in African American autobiography and the major opposing voice; where Hurston's autobiography is performative and evasive, Malcolm X's is confrontational and politically explicit; both are foundational texts in African American self-representation.
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Buy on AmazonJonah's Gourd Vine
by Zora Neale Hurston
Hurston's debut novel, drawn from her parents' lives — the companion in her fiction that shows the biographical reality behind the autobiography; John and Lucy Pearson are the fictionalized versions of John and Lucy Hurston.
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Buy on AmazonMules and Men
by Zora Neale Hurston
Hurston's folklore collection — the companion ethnographic work that shows the other dimension of her life: not the self-invented writer but the trained anthropologist; the two books together give the fullest picture of who Hurston was.
- 6Buy on Amazon
The Souls of Black Folk
by W.E.B. Du Bois
Du Bois's landmark work — the companion in African American intellectual autobiography; Du Bois and Hurston are the two great opposing poles of early 20th-century Black thought: Du Bois writing from Harvard-educated distance, Hurston from inside the folk community.
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Buy on AmazonBlack Boy
by Richard Wright
Wright's autobiography about the Black South — the major competing voice and the major opposing sensibility; where Hurston celebrates the folk culture of Eatonville, Wright describes the Black South as something to escape from; both are essential African American autobiographies.
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Buy on AmazonColored People
by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Gates's memoir about growing up in Piedmont, West Virginia — the companion in African American literary autobiography about a specific Black community in the mid-20th century; Gates's community is the intellectual companion to Hurston's Eatonville.
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