Zora Neale Hurston: Dust Tracks on a Road

This was exactly the book I needed right now. I relate very closely to Hurston insofar as I, too, have gone through my youth as an alien in this world. Now that I am leaving adolescence at last, it is a source of comfort and inspiration to read the autobiography of one who came to find her niche and touched the world in the process. In fact, Hurston entered the world with both fists at the same approximate age I am now. As a bonus, Hurston is more than up to the difficult task of making me laugh out loud when nobody is around to witness it.

As a side bar: so clear and passionate is her writing, she accomplishes the remarkable task of rebutting the objection raised by Maya Angelou in her otherwise glowing foreword. Angelou hints that Hurston is an apologist, and thereby something of a coward. Hurston's position is far more compelling, however, than Angelou's accusation, though the latter has the advantage of writing after the fact.