Reading Order
Mules and Men Reading Order
Mules and Men (1935) by Zora Neale Hurston is her first major nonfiction work — a collection of African American folklore, folktales, and conjure (Hoodoo) practices gathered from Eatonville, Florida and Polk County, Florida, and from New Orleans. Hurston collected this material during two fieldwork expeditions in 1927 and 1928-1929, conducting research under her mentor Franz Boas at Columbia, and Mules and Men is the literary transformation of that research: she presents the folklore not as dry anthropological data but as living performance, embedding the stories and practices within the social contexts in which they occur and making herself a character in her own collection. Mules and Men is a revolutionary text in American anthropology and American literature. Before Hurston, the collection of African American folklore was often conducted by white academics who presented the material as exotic curiosity; Hurston presents it as the living wisdom of a community she knows from the inside. The stories in the first section — the folk tales, the lies, the stories told on the porch in Eatonville — are funny, ribald, theologically sophisticated, and formally beautiful. The second section, on Hoodoo practices in New Orleans, is the first serious literary account of Hoodoo as a living spiritual practice rather than as superstition. Mules and Men is the foundation of all of Hurston's fiction — the source material for the vernacular speech and the folk worldview that animate Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Where to start
Read Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) first — it is Hurston's masterpiece and shows her folk material transformed into fiction. Mules and Men is best read as the companion that shows where that material came from. Any HarperCollins paperback.
Complete Mules and Men Book List
- 1Buy
Mules and Men
Zora Neale Hurston·1935·The folklore collection — African American folk tales and Hoodoo practices from Eatonville, Polk County, and New Orleans; the foundation of all Hurston's fiction and the most important collection of African American folklore in American literature; revolutionary in presenting the material from inside the community rather than as external observation. - 2Buy
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston·1937·The essential companion — Hurston's masterpiece; the folk material of Mules and Men transformed into fiction; the entry point to Hurston for most readers. - 3Buy
Dust Tracks on a Road
Zora Neale Hurston·1942·Hurston's autobiography — the companion memoir that places the fieldwork of Mules and Men within the context of her life and her relationship with Franz Boas and the Harlem Renaissance. - 4Buy
Jonah's Gourd Vine
Zora Neale Hurston·1934·Hurston's debut novel — the companion fictional use of the same Eatonville material that Mules and Men collects; published one year before Mules and Men, showing the relationship between her fiction and her ethnographic work. - 5Buy
Tell My Horse
Zora Neale Hurston·1938·Hurston's companion folklore collection — about Vodou practices in Jamaica and Haiti; the complement to Mules and Men in her larger project of collecting and preserving African diasporic spiritual and cultural traditions. - 6Buy
The Souls of Black Folk
W.E.B. Du Bois·1903·Du Bois's landmark work — the companion in African American intellectual history; where Du Bois writes about African American consciousness from the perspective of a Harvard-educated scholar looking at the community from a certain height, Hurston writes from inside the community; the two are essential companion perspectives. - 7Buy
Black Boy
Richard Wright·1945·Wright's autobiography — the companion in African American literary autobiography about Southern Black life; where Hurston celebrates the folk culture of the Black South, Wright describes it as something to escape from; the two represent the major opposing positions in mid-20th-century African American intellectual debate. - 8Buy
The Negro and His Folklore in Nineteenth-Century Periodicals
Bruce Jackson·1967·The scholarly companion — the collection of 19th-century material on African American folklore that gives context for how revolutionary Hurston's approach was; for readers who want to understand what Mules and Men transformed.
Mules and Men — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Mules and Men about?
Mules and Men is a collection of African American folklore gathered by Hurston during two fieldwork expeditions in 1927 and 1928-1929. The first section contains folk tales and other stories collected in Eatonville and Polk County, Florida — the 'lies' told on front porches, the tall tales about John and the Devil, the stories about Brer Rabbit and High John the Conqueror. The second section is about Hoodoo practices in New Orleans — the spiritual system that combines African, Catholic, and indigenous American elements, and that Hurston learned from several Hoodoo doctors including the legendary Luke Turner. Throughout both sections, Hurston makes herself a character in her own collection: she does not present the material from the outside but narrates her own arrival, acceptance, and participation in the communities she is studying.
What is Hoodoo, and why is the Mules and Men account important?
Hoodoo is an African American syncretic spiritual practice that combines elements from West African religion, Haitian Vodou, Catholic saints' traditions, and indigenous American plant knowledge. It is concerned primarily with practical intervention in everyday life — healing, protection, love, revenge — and is practiced by conjure workers or root doctors. Before Mules and Men, Hoodoo had been written about primarily by white scholars and journalists who treated it as superstition or exotic entertainment. Hurston's account in the second section of Mules and Men is the first serious literary account of Hoodoo as a living spiritual practice: she learns from Hoodoo practitioners, undergoes initiation rituals, and presents the practice with respect and specificity. It remains one of the most important accounts of Hoodoo in American literature.
Who is John the Conqueror in the folk tales?
High John the Conqueror is one of the central figures in the folk tales that Hurston collects in Mules and Men — a trickster hero who outwits the Devil, outsmarts Ole Massa (the white slave owner), and represents the indestructible spirit of Black people. John the Conqueror is descended from the West African trickster tradition (Anansi the Spider, Eshu-Elegba) and was transformed in slavery into a specific African American figure of resistance: a man so clever and so lucky that he always survives and always wins, no matter the odds against him. Hurston's collection of John the Conqueror tales is the most important literary gathering of this folk tradition, and it connects directly to her fiction — the tradition of wit and survival under oppression that animates Their Eyes Were Watching God.
How is Mules and Men different from conventional anthropology?
Mules and Men is different from conventional anthropology in its method and its attitude. Conventional anthropological accounts of the period presented folk material from the outside — as data to be analyzed, as evidence of 'primitive' thought, as curiosity. Hurston presents the material from inside the community that produced it: she is herself an Eatonville native, she is welcomed back as a member of the community, and she presents the folk tales and the Hoodoo practices as the living wisdom of a people she loves. She also makes herself a character in her own collection — narrating her arrival, her acceptance, her relationships — in a way that conventional scholarship did not permit. This approach was revolutionary and anticipated later developments in anthropology (participant observation, reflexive ethnography) by decades.
What should I read after Mules and Men?
After Mules and Men, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) is Hurston's masterpiece and the fiction that emerges from this folklore. Tell My Horse (1938) is Hurston's companion folklore collection about Vodou in Jamaica and Haiti. Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934) is the companion fiction from Eatonville. For African American intellectual history, W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk is the essential companion and opposing perspective.
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