Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folk-Tales from the Gulf States

"Imagine the situations in which these speech acts occur. Recall a front stoop, juke joint, funeral, wedding, barbershop, kitchen: the music, noise, communal energy, and release. Dream. Participate the way you do when you allow a song to transport you, all kinds of songs, from hip-hop rap to Bach to Monk, each bearing its different history of sounds and silences."

— From the Foreword by John Edgar Wideman

African-American folklore was Zora Neale H…