The Fire That Genius Brings - Concept 1

The Fire That Genius Brings - Concept 1. Running Head: THE FIRE THAT GENIUS BRINGS – CONCEPT Concept Paper The Fire That Genius Brings: Creativity and the Unhealed Companionship Between Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes Sharon D. Johnson P.O. Box 491179, Los Angeles, CA 90049 [email protected] 646.401.3833 DP 932C Dissertation Development III Track K-III Dr. Jennifer Leigh Selig Spring 2008 April 30, 2008 The Fire That Genius Brings - Concept 2. Concept Paper The Fire That Genius Brings: Creativity and the Unhealed Companionship Between Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes Introduction Autobiographical Interest My interest in writing my dissertation on the dynamic of the relationship between Harlem Renaissance writers Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes has grown out of what seems like a lifetime of interests and experiences. I began kindergarten in Brooklyn, New York in 1969, two years after Hughes’s death, and his image and his writing were very present in the hallways and classrooms. Hughes seemed larger than life. Especially in those early childhood elementary grades, the poetry of Langston Hughes was a favorite to read and to emulate as I wrote poetry of my own. Even during my non- school time, I enjoyed writing poems and stories. Without my knowing, my teacher sent some of my poetry to a publisher compiling a volume of children’s writings on their experiences living in the inner city, titled I am Somebody (Ohenewaa, 1970). My work, in the end, was more optimistic in tone than the volume was intended to be. Still, I was given a copy of the book, in which the editor of the Ladies Home Journal wrote me a note affirming that, “You, Sharon, are not only somebody, you’re a poet and a writer.” That I might actually be a poet and a writer like my favorites, Gwendolyn Brooks and Langston Hughes, was pretty cool in my young mind. Not The Fire That Genius Brings - Concept 3. only my passion for writing, but also my bent toward optimism, toward wanting goodness and hope to prevail, would later come into play in my work as a writer, and in my dissertation. Music and visual art were also areas of great interest to me where I showed ability. I took a free summer art class at the Brooklyn Museum in the early 70s, but otherwise, music and art lessons were not in the budget of a blue-collar family with four children. Writing required only a pencil and paper. Those I had plenty of. And so I wrote. In junior high school, even as the literary repertoire expanded to include Shakespeare and term papers, I continued to write poetry. My ninth grade English teacher, Mr. Morris, an African American man who was a published poet and writer himself, was a formidable figure in the classroom. Yet he always affirmed the interests of my classmates and me. A poem I would write as extra credit or for a special assignment would be rewarded by him with books of poetry and literature, by both the classic “canon” as well as African American writers. Langston Hughes was always in the mix, even as I became interested in Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou, and other strong African American female poetic voices. Mr. Morris was the first person who let me know, in a tangible way, that I could actually pursue writing as a career, as did these African American writers I admired and identified with. Even throughout high school, an academically rigorous school specializing in math, science, and engineering, I maintained my passion for writing. I chose a major, graphic communications, which would keep me academically connected to the arts, with its classes in freehand drawing, layout and graphic design, and journalism. For honors English class, I chose to take creative writing, and I also worked on the literary magazine and, later, became literature editor or the yearbook. Similarly interested schoolmates and I would share poems we had written. Maya Angelou’s poem, “Still I Rise” (1978/1994), was a favorite amongst my The Fire That Genius Brings - Concept 4. girlfriends, and our own poetry also spoke of our nascent adult femininity. Personally, that developing aspect of my personality was challenged at home by seemingly constant conflict between my parents, conflict of which I was often in the middle, physically and emotionally. The conflicts didn’t begin during my adolescence; I remember witnessing periodic altercations as a young child. The divorce my mother announced to my older brother and me at that time never materialized, but later, as a teenager, I sometimes wished that it had. I would write in my diary, with amazing clarity, my interpretation of what was the real root of my parents’ conflict, making note of their behavior and character traits, and what they could and should do that would bring peace. They seemed to me, I wrote, like they were the willful teenagers, while I felt like the adult who had the maturity to apply some degree of wisdom to the situation. Did this thing called marriage, called relationship, have to be so chaotic and difficult? Why couldn’t two people, whom everyone else saw as a “great” couple, seem to see through their own “stuff” to the core of that greatness? My fascination with, and fear of, the realities of intimate personal relationship, informed by the experience of my parents’ relationship, of trying to “figure it out,” and “figure them out,” definitely colored the things I chose to read and write. I didn’t learn about Zora Neale Hurston until I got to college in 1981. I had never heard of her, had never read or even seen any of her books, until then. She was the first African American graduate of my college, and our organization of black women students held our meetings in the Hurston lounge. Zora was our model, our hero, a literal and figurative minority we could identify with. That she was also a writer and a social scientist (my major and [undeclared] minor areas of study) added specificity to the connection I felt to her. Twenty years after my graduation, when Hurston’s seminal novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), was being turned in to a television movie by Oprah Winfrey (Winfrey & The Fire That Genius Brings - Concept 5. Forte, 2005), I pitched the story to my college alumnae magazine and another literary magazine. They both accepted the pitch, and so I began researching the journey of the novel from publication in 1937 to television production in 2005. In the course of my research, I became fascinated by Hurston’s letters, through which I realized that many of the writers of the Harlem Renaissance weren’t just contemporaries or acquaintances, they were friends. Just as I had read about Dorothy Parker and other writers gathering at the Algonquin hotel, I imagined the same fraternization amongst Hurston, Dorothy West, and other black writers of that time. When I learned that Hurston and Langston Hughes were good friends, I was particularly excited. They were the giants to me (evidenced by their immortalization on U.S. postage stamps!). I knew vaguely about their play, Mule Bone (Hughes & Hurston, 1931/1991), but learned during my research for the articles that their collaboration ended badly, and ended their friendship. These two people, who hung out together, corresponded almost daily, supported each other emotionally and, at times, financially, who shared immense talent and a similar desire and goal to represent black life in all of its color and complexity. This intimate bond was unraveled by a dispute over authorship of Mule Bone, to the point that they never spoke to each other again after that. That the overall scholarly conclusion considered it a “literary conflict,” dismissing any other possibility or explanation for the tumultuous turn of events, rang too hollow and too easy to me. Because I had deadlines to meet at the time, I could not fully research the Hurston/Hughes connection, but it has remained a “to do” for three years. Over those three years, I enrolled at Pacifica and received edification, structure, and focus to my interest in the social science of depth psychology. The autobiographical parallels of writing, financial concerns, and evolving African American culture that mark my interest are somewhat obvious. Van Manen (1990) writes that to be deeply interested in something (inter-esse) is to be or stand in the midst The Fire That Genius Brings - Concept 6. of it (p. 43). I once stood in the middle of my biological parents’ complex relationship. Ultimately, I am still that optimistic little girl and wise teenage young woman at heart, who now seeks to apply more acquired psychological insights and interpretations onto the complex, wounded relationship of my literary “parents” via my dissertation topic. Relevance of the Topic for Depth Psychology Edinger (1984) explains that, “Consciousness derives from con or cum, meaning “with” or “together, and scire, to “know” or “to see. In other words, consciousness is the experience of knowing together with an other, that is, in a setting of twoness” (p. 36). If Jungian psychology is concerned with bringing the unconscious into consciousness, then researching via a Jungian lens requires consideration of interpersonal and intrapsychic relationship. Exploring the dynamic of the Hurston/Hughes relationship, therefore, is a depth psychological exercise. Further, the exercise will inform the field of depth psychology by opening up the areas of African American culture and history, creativity and artistic expression for greater discussion in that field. Just as the lives, personal histories, and psychological theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung informed their relationship (and its demise), those of Hurston and Hughes informed their relationship (and its demise).

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