The Mule-Bone

Mule Bone (1930) is the fruit of collaboration between two of the twentieth century's leading black artists, Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes. It was never staged during their lifetimes, however, and was considered by many to remain unfinished due to extensive and heated disagreement over copyright and authorship. When it finally was staged, at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater in 1991, Mule Bone faced harsh to lukewarm reception from theatergoers and critics alike, and closed after only 68 performances. Despite this, it remains essential reading for fans of Hurston and Neale, as well as for readers interested in learning more about the community of artists that made up the Harlem Renaissance.

The play examines the layers of difference which both build and trouble rural black life in the American south. Jim Weston is a guitarist and a Methodist. His friend Dave Carter is a dancer and a Baptist. When the two fall out over their mutual love of Daisy Carter, Jim attacks Dave with a mule bone and is arrested. The ensuing trial, overseen by Elder Simms, a Methodist minister, and Elder Childers, a Baptist minister, lays bare the differences, often razor-thin, which dictate and shape the reality of everyday life for black Americans. This is a subtle work which ironizes African-American religion and community on its own terms--a radical act for an era dominated by such figures as blackface-singer Al Jolson, a time in which blackness and black art were derisively shaped by white figures for white audiences.

Complicated from its inception, Mule Bone by Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes is a groundbreaking play, a work ahead of its time that continues to wait for an audience. In a time when discussions of the historical influence of racism in America and throughout the world have finally taken center stage, Mule Bone may not have to wait much longer for the attention and acclaim it deserves.

With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this new edition of Langston Hughes' and Zora Neale Hurston's Mule Bone is an important work of American literature reimagined for modern readers.