Zora Neale Hurston and the Curious Power of One

Zora Neale Hurston describes herself as “a crow in a pigeon’s nest” in her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road. For Hurston, the metaphor illustrates her singular perspective as an atypical presence in what she considered a stereotypical environment—or, put differently, the difference her presence made in a dominant space. Katherine McKittrick describes metaphors as “observational scaffolding.” Observational scaffolding functions as both a signal and a map, highlighting sites of struggle and liberation along the continuum of life’s experiences. Therefore, this article engages with discourses on decolonization and Black feminist epistemologies, acknowledges the differences between Hurston’s and today’s anthropology, and challenges other disciplines and fields to reconsider how values such as democracy and justice might influence engagement with Black knowledge production, specifically from Black women.