Guest editor Aunjanue Ellis says that reading aloud is one of the “first acts of love an adult gives to a child.” Listen as she reads a lush 1921 story by one of her favorite writers — a tale of deep longing, beauty, and loss, from the 2020 collection Hitting a Straight Lick With a Crooked Stick.
In January 2020, actress Aunjanue Ellis found herself in one of her least favorite places — a recording studio. “I’m not good in recording studios,” she confesses. “I get very impatient, and do-overs bother me, AND it’s claustrophobic.”
Another reason she dislikes this kind of performance: “I can only use my voice. There are no other tricks to use, because no one can see me. And also, I am alone. No scene partners. Just me and a taunting microphone.”
Aunjanue faced the taunting microphone to record the audiobook of Hitting a Straight Lick With a Crooked Stick, the 2020 collection of short stories by Zora Neale Hurston, the iconic Southern writer and anthropologist.
Aunjanue’s performance won wide critical acclaim, including being selected by the American Library Association and Google as one of the best audiobooks of the year. In its review, industry magazine AudioFile wrote: “These stories speak of love and survival in the African-American community. Ellis plays with Hurston’s language and becomes members of the community as she delivers dialogue. She is the screechy grandmother; the spirited, rambunctious adolescent; and the melodramatic lover.”
Aunjanue says recording the audiobook — her first — was her toughest performance to date. “I had to approach it like I was speaking another language. There were words that are obsolete or arcane. And the way that it is written — graphically — it requires your eyes to work differently and more specifically. It was the hardest thing I have done as a performer,” she told BookPage magazine. “I was surprised at how exacting it is,” she added. “You can’t leave out or add words, which I do all the time when I perform in other mediums. You realize that the words are queen. You must perform them exactly how they are written. To not do that is to deny the listener the book.”
One of Hurston’s best-known fans, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, took to her blog to praise Aunjanue’s performance. “When I finished listening to ‘John Redding Goes to Sea,’ the first story in Hitting a Straight Lick With a Crooked Stick, … I burst into tears. I’m easy to cry, as we said in the South when I was a child, and being easy to cry made me know early on how many varying and different emotions can be expressed in tears: sorrow, yes, but also joy, gratitude, delight and triumph. I thought: Aunjanue Ellis, who is reading these stories, is doing so perfectly. Which then led me into thoughts of: Perhaps that is what love is. Perfection. And then, perhaps that is the only perfect thing. Love. I also thought: I bet she went to some very proper schools, too, and yet, here she is, able to sound like she never went, well, nowhere. But Eatonville, Florida.”
“John Redding Goes to Sea” is one of Aunjanue’s favorites. “It is so supple and delicate to the ear,” she says. “Zora has such a keen eye and ear to the myriad ways her characters express grief, longing and joy.”
Like Alice Walker, Aunjanue uses the word “love” in describing the experience of sharing this story. “Telling a story is one of the first acts of love an adult gives to a child. You have the voice of someone who adores you taking you on an adventure that you can only see in the matinee theater of your mind. My love for stories and reading has never strayed from this idea.”
—Valerie Boyd
Credit: “John Redding Goes to Sea” from the Harper Audio edition of Hitting a Straight Lick With a Crooked Stick: Stories From the Harlem Renaissance by Zora Neale Hurston, read by Aunjanue Ellis. Copyright ©2020 by the Zora Neale Hurston Trust; copyright ©2020 by HarperCollins Publishers. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
