Beyond NOLA: Exploring Zora Neale Hurston in Bogalusa, Louisiana's Magic City

“The extent of information provided in each section is immense, and the combination of archival materials, historical maps, photographs, letters, and segments of Hurston’s writing work together to center the city as an important site not just for her research, but also as a location that provided employment opportunities for countless other Black Americans, including laborers, professional class, and entrepreneurs. Through the combination of these elements, Beyond NOLA brings the active Black community of Bogalusa to life….Beyond NOLA is an innovative digital humanities project that creatively expands the scholarship on Hurston.”

Jessina Emmert, University of Kansas

Beyond NOLA examines the influence of Bogalusa, an industrial town seventy miles north of New Orleans (NOLA), on Zora Neale Hurston’s research in hoodoo and African American culture. Her field notes and letters to Langston Hughes shed light on how her experiences of traveling alone in the American South and engaging with the people of Bogalusa at the turn of the twentieth century shaped her research and potentially resonated in her later literary production. Leveraging archival, cartographic, and literary research presented in a multimodal digital platform, this project acknowledges Bogalusa’s significance in her life’s work, highlights the residents and racial environment she encountered while traveling to and through the city, and ultimately expands scholarship on Hurston's time spent in Louisiana beyond New Orleans.

This title was peer reviewed with a single-blind process by the AFRO-PWW editorial board.

Please cite this book using the DOI: 10.21900/pww.28.