Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica was published by J.B. Lippincott in 1938 and is Hurston’s second major work of anthropology — a study of Voodoo practices in Haiti and folk practices in Jamaica, based on fieldwork conducted in 1936-1937 with a Guggenheim Fellowship. The book is part ethnography, part travel writing, part political analysis, and part spiritual autobiography: Hurston did not merely observe Voodoo but participated in it, underwent initiation, and wrote from inside the tradition.
The Book
Hurston organizes the material geographically and thematically:
Jamaica — the first section documents folk practices, social structures, and political dynamics in Jamaica. Hurston observes the class and color hierarchies of Jamaican society with the same precision she brought to American racial dynamics.
Haiti: Politics — Hurston arrived in Haiti during a period of political instability and provides surprisingly acute political reporting. Her analysis of power, class, color, and the legacy of colonialism anticipates later post-colonial theory.
Haiti: Voodoo — the book’s longest and most important section. Hurston documents the Voodoo religion with the seriousness it deserves — as a coherent spiritual system with theology, ritual, hierarchy, and social function. She describes ceremonies, possessions, the relationship between the loa (spirits) and their devotees, and the role of the houngan (priest) in Haitian society.
She also documents zombification — one of the most controversial sections, in which she claims to have seen a zombie (Felicia Felix-Mentor) and photographs her. The photograph, reprinted in the book, remains one of the most discussed images in the literature on Haiti.
Method
As in Mules and Men, Hurston’s method is participant observation — but taken further. She underwent Voodoo initiations, participated in ceremonies, and allowed herself to be affected by the practices she studied. This was radical anthropology for the 1930s: most researchers maintained strict observer distance from their subjects. Hurston argued that distance produced misunderstanding — that you could not understand a spiritual practice from outside it.
Her willingness to take Voodoo seriously as religion (rather than dismissing it as superstition) was itself a political act. Colonial and American representations of Voodoo had always been sensationalist and contemptuous, designed to confirm the “primitiveness” of black peoples. Hurston’s respectful, detailed account challenged this tradition directly.
Collecting Tell My Horse
First edition (J.B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1938): Tan cloth binding with brown lettering. Dust jacket with illustration.
Identification points:
- J.B. Lippincott imprint
- “FIRST EDITION” stated
- Photographs throughout
- 311 pages
Market values: Fine copies in dust jacket bring $2,000–$5,000. Scarce in any condition; fine jacketed copies are rare.
Without jacket: $400–$800.
Signed copies: Virtually nonexistent on the market.
The book’s subject matter gives it crossover appeal — collectors of African diaspora studies, Caribbean literature, religious studies, and anthropology all seek it, in addition to Hurston’s core literary audience.