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I was watching The Chef Show recently, and Jon Favreau said something about success - that we have a way of telling stories so that they take on a feeling of inevitability that was completely lacking at the time - when we were still trying to figure everything out. Reading Zora and Langston by Yuval Taylor is a reminder of this. As an English teacher, it’s so easy to buy into and perpetuate the narrative of genius, of inevitable success. It’s hard not to read Their Eyes We’re Watching God or recite “I, Too” and feel it was inevitable. But this book reminds us that these writers’ trajectories were anything but certain. They struggled physically, psychologically, and financially as they worked to find their voices in the shifting landscape of American literature. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Hurston and Hughes were so different, but they were bound together by their love of writing; ironically, it was their collaboration that drove them apart. Taylor explores their coming of age as writers during the 1920s as well as their friendship and falling out, and all of it is filled with the kinds of literary “celebrity” connections I love about this period. If you’re familiar with the Harlem Renaissance, as I am, much of it might not be new to you, but these connections make up some of my favorites moments of the biography. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Most people have a passing knowledge of the Lost Generation - a circle of 20s writers including Stein, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald who wrote, partied, and had affairs within their circle. Harlem was much the same - a community in which Black artists, writers, and intellectuals such as Jessie Fauset, Alain Locke, W.E.B. DuBois, and Countee Cullen crossed paths and sometimes crossed each other as their lives, both personal and professional, became entwined. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ So many people love the roaring twenties but don’t know anything about the Harlem Renaissance - this biography, while not comprehensive, is a great place to start! via Instagram https://instagr.am/p/CRl8BrIr10B/