Interview With Zora Neale Hurston Documentary Filmmaker Tracy Heather Strain

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On Making Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space

In Reading Color (IRC): There may be inherent and even subconscious racism involved, of course, when white people record Black histories, but how much of understanding the culture is needed to accurately record it? There was and perhaps still is this idea that anthropologists must be outside and away from their subjects to study them, but Black people have different ways of recording history. How does that affect the end result?

Tracy Heather Strain: With any group, if you go to the community and don’t understand what you’re seeing, you can get undesirable results. Once I’m invited into a community, that’s when I can get strong, heartfelt material. I can’t tell you how many interviews I’ve had where, if I wasn’t Black, the conversation might not have been understood as it was intended. But it can also be deeper than race — a lot of people limit the idea of community to “Black, white, Asian, etc.”

IRC: That’s yet another reminder that we need all kinds of diverse voices, even outside of race — voices from different socioeconomic backgrounds as well, for example.

Tracy Heather Strain: That’s because you’re bringing yourself to it. There’s no such thing as complete objectivity. Documentaries are, like anything, subjective. You have these true facts, but it’s how these facts are incorporated. Documentary is a form of storytelling, it’s not about finding documents.

Take for instance how, once we knew that Their Eyes Were Watching God was the third act climax, we thought backwards from there. We thought “what does an audience need to know to make that moment comprehended as well as felt?” I also knew I wanted to bring up the epilogue about Alice Walker, and was tasked with figuring out what to include so you understood why Hurston disappeared from public view. That’s how we made decisions about what to include, but someone else would choose something else.

IRC: Where are places you’ve seen Zora’s influence that maybe aren’t credit as such?

Tracy Heather Strain:

Well beyond anthropology, and there’s still work being done for her work to be accepted in anthropology, she was also interested in the stage. Someone described her as interdisciplinary before it was a thing to be. It’s kind of interesting to think of what would have happened if she had gone to Yale School of Drama like she had wanted. She wanted to share Black culture and recreate it. She wrote plays while she was at Howard. That’s one main area that people don’t know about.

Another area that’s not related to her creative output was how she handled relationships. They didn’t last long in the ’20s and ’30s because she wasn’t willing to give up her career. So many women wanted to have careers, but she didn’t give up hers. People know she’s a feminist, but don’t know why. And that’s another reason to talk about Zora Neale Hurston.

And then there’s the footage and recordings that she’s helped other researchers get, like Alan Lomax and others. Hurston was the reason he and some other white researchers were able to gather certain material. There were times that what some folklorists were presenting as Black culture was actually Irish or Scottish, and she helped to fix that.

IRC: What is something you’d want people to know about Zora above all else?

Tracy Heather Strain:

One of the things that was really important to me was to make sure that the people and imagery in this film appear as the type of faces she would see. It’s unfortunate that in 2023, this is refreshing and new, but this was a priority for me. A friend said “I know you made this film for everybody, but it also feels like you made it for us.” I feel like there’s a host of stories out there, stories about African Americans that haven’t been told. And since so many people learn things from video, it’s important that this imagery gets out.

It’s not always easy for us to do many things, but we shouldn’t let that stop us. If it is your passion, don’t let that stop you. Zora didn’t let it stop her, she kept going. She didn’t win the Guggenheim at first, but kept trying.

She was a smart and tenacious woman who worked really hard. She read a lot as a kid; she knew the classics. I was privileged to see her papers and drafts, but I don’t think she expected overnight success. There’s a way our society champions people who are overnight successes, but they aren’t. They just got some attention that made it seem that way. She knew what she was passionate about and she pursued it. She created her own path. I’m trying to use her as inspiration. Try to be comfortable with who you are.You don’t have to be perfect.

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Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space is currently streaming on PBS.