Two library books for TWOsday

Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick ~ by Zora Neale Hurston, edited by Genevieve West, foreword by Tayari Jones, 2020, stories, xliii + 253 pages

In 1925, Barnard student Zora Neale Hurston — the sole black student at the college — was living in New York, “desperately striving for a toe-hold on the world.”  During this period, she began writing short works that captured the zeitgeist of African American life and transformed her into one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance.  Nearly a century later, this singular talent is recognized as one of the most influential and revered American artists of the modern period.

Murder in the Dark ~ by Margaret Atwood, 1983, fiction, 110 pages

These short fictions and prose poems are beautifully bizarre:  bread can no longer be thought of as wholesome comforting loaves; the pretensions of the male chef are subjected to a light roasting; a poisonous brew is concocted by cynical five-year-olds; and knowing when to stop is of deadly importance in a game of Murder in the Dark.