Magnolia Flower

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by Zora Neale Hurston with Ibram X. Kendi
illustrated by Loveis Wise
Transcript
00:00To Zara, to maroons, to love and freedom.
00:14Ibram.
00:16To B.M.H., thank you for your beautiful reflection and teaching on love.
00:22Love eyes.
00:23To Zara who jumped at the sun, Lucy Ann Potts Hurston, John Cornelius Hurston and to children
00:30everywhere.
00:31May their paths be filled with light.
00:34Zara Neal Hurston Trust.
00:37Magnolia Flower.
00:39By Zara Neal Hurston.
00:41Adapted by Ibram X.
00:43Kendi.
00:44Illustrated by Love Eyes Wise.
00:47The brook laughed and sang.
00:49It hurled its water into sparkling dance fighters up into the moonlight.
00:55The brook sang louder louder danced faster faster with a teasing splash.
01:00At the three leaning trees on its banks.
01:04The trees awoke and began to murmur noisily of seasons and centuries love and birth and
01:09the transplanting of life.
01:12Nature knows nothing of death.
01:14At last, the brook danced into the bosom of the mighty river upsetting the plants who
01:19blushed from the moon's kisses.
01:22The mighty river turned its bed and spoke.
01:26Why oh young water, do you disturb my sleep?
01:30Because oh mighty one replied the brook.
01:33The flowers boom.
01:35The trees and wind say beautiful things to me.
01:39The moon shines upon me with a full face and there are people in love beneath the orange
01:44trees on my banks.
01:46No matter, scolded the river.
01:49I have seen millions of people in love child.
01:53Tell me about some of them, begged the brook.
01:56Oh well the river muttered.
01:58I suppose brooks must be humored.
02:02Long ago.
02:04Humans who were pale of skin held a dark race of humans in bondage.
02:09The dark ones cried out in sorrow and woe.
02:12Not here in my country.
02:15Farther north.
02:16Humans carried their tares to the sea and the tide would bring some of them to me.
02:21But some of the darker ones did not weep.
02:24They fled in the night to freedom.
02:27One of them came here.
02:30Bentley was large and strong.
02:32The beasts were afraid of him the Florida forest made way for him.
02:37He gathered stones and metals and built a big house.
02:41Soon a whole village of runaways hid out over here.
02:45They were called maroons.
02:48They lived on an island of freedom in a vast sea of slavery.
02:52Bentley married Swift Deer.
02:54A Cherokee woman who had fled her own trail of tears.
02:58Swift Deer and Bentley had a daughter.
03:02Magnolia flower they called her.
03:05For she came at the time of the flowers opening.
03:08When she was four years old, the tide brought rumors of war war war over slavery.
03:15After the war ended, slavery ended.
03:18Black people walked free on the lands of Swift Deer's ancestors.
03:23Wind and water again grew sweet.
03:27Magnolia flowers started to fully bloom.
03:30One day, as the sun gave me a good night kiss and the began their party.
03:35I bore a young man named John about Magnolia's age.
03:40John did not have much money.
03:42But he had many words.
03:45Swift Deer liked him.
03:47Bentley did not.
03:49He wanted a man of metals.
03:52Not words for Magnolia.
03:55Before two weeks had passed, John had taught Magnolia to read strange marvels with her
04:00dark eyes and she had taught John to sing with his.
04:04Oh, how words love.
04:07Love knows nothing of death.
04:09Soon Bentley had had enough of their love.
04:12She locked John in a room in the house.
04:15All stayed away.
04:17All feared Bentley.
04:19Not Magnolia.
04:21As her father slept.
04:23She went and freed John.
04:26One minute more and they flew down the path to the three leaning trees into the boat a
04:30way northward.
04:32This all happened more than forty years ago.
04:36As humans reckon Time River said.
04:39The flower has passed from the hearts of people who knew her.
04:44Bentley and Swift Deer died.
04:47Freedom for black and native people died too.
04:50The tide brought all their tears to me.
04:53And their joy.
04:55And their love.
04:57Their love is mighty and ever flowing like me.
05:00The brook had listened thrilled to its very bottom at times.
05:05The river spoke calmly on flowing under the moon as it moved to the sea.
05:10An old couple picked their way down to the water's edge.
05:14It's been forty-seven years John Magnolia said sweetly.
05:18Do you think we can find the place?
05:21Why yes Magnolia my flower.
05:24Unless they have cut down our trees.
05:27But if they are standing, we'll know em.
05:31There they are.
05:33Magnolia pointed.
05:34They hugged the trunks of the three leaning trees.
05:38Then hugged each other and sat down shyly upon the heaped up roots.
05:43John listen.
05:45Did you ever hear a river make such a sound?
05:49Magnolia whispered.
05:50Why, it seems almost as if it were talking.
05:55Maybe it's welcoming us back John said.
05:58Maybe Magnolia beamed.
06:00I always felt that the river knew all about you and me.
06:04A historical note.
06:07Since the arrival of European settlers, native peoples have been fighting for the lands of
06:12their ancestors and enslaved Africans have been fighting to be free.
06:18White enslavers and the United States grew very rich forcing black people to work without
06:23pay on land taken from native peoples.
06:27But some black people, like Bentley, ran away from this bandage.
06:33Sometimes they ran to deserted mountains swamps islands and hard to reach places where
06:37they formed free communities.
06:40These people were called maroons through the Americas.
06:45Sometimes the maroon communities included native people, like Swift Deer, fleeting forced
06:50relocation.
06:52In the 1830s, the U.S. government forced about 100,000 native peoples in the southeast to
07:00relocate west of the Mississippi River to make way for more slavery.
07:05Thousands of native people died during this long and hard trail of tears.
07:11Beginning in 1861, many people also died during the Civil War over slavery.
07:18Slavery ended in 1865 as the war ended.
07:22Now free to move, many black people did, like Magnolia and John.
07:28Freedom was fleeting though.
07:30But where there is oppression there is resistance.
07:34Where there is resistance there is love.
07:37Through it all, love remained, love stories remained, like Magnolia Flower.
07:42An Author's Note.
07:45This book is adapted from Magnolia Flower a short story Hurston published in an issue
07:50of The Spokesman in 1925.
07:54Short stories, folklore, non-fiction, plays, novels.
07:59They are all like treasure to me this trove of Zora Neale Hurston.
08:04But our children should not have to wait until they come of age to read to be told to be
08:09shown Hurston's stories.
08:11As a girl dad.
08:13I did not want my daughter or any child to wait.
08:17As I adapt Hurston's work for young readers, I am working closely with the Zora Neale Hurston
08:23Trust Remarkable Illustrators and a wonderful editor and Hurston admirer, Ileana Horry.
08:30We are on a mission.
08:32The earlier we expose our children to our literary treasures to our literary legends
08:37like Hurston the better.
08:39When I first read Magnolia Flower as a parent, I saw this children's book which has been
08:45brought to radiance by the breathtaking illustrations of Love Eyes Wise.
08:50The story is distinctively Hurston.
08:53It features a dynamic main character in Magnolia.
08:58Its two protagonists are a river and a brook and this effortless use of characters from
09:02the natural world is reminiscent of the black folklore Hurston spent a lifetime collecting
09:08in the rural South.
09:10Love is a consistent theme in Hurston's work and again in this book.
09:15Love is conveyed as a formative force, a binding force, an eternal force marking this
09:20book as another moving Hurston love story.
09:24A love story of freedom.
09:26A love story of nature.
09:29A love story of Afro-Indigenous resistance.
09:32A love story of home.
09:35Every Hurston story is a treasure.
09:38I am honored to help deliver this treasure to the world.
09:42I am honored to help honor Hurston's work.
09:45Ibram X. Kendi.
09:47The End.