EVERY TONGUE GOT TO CONFESS

Negro Folk-Tales From the Gulf States

By Zora Neale Hurston

HarperCollins. 279 pp. $25

FROM MY PEOPLE

400 Years of African American Folklore

Edited by Daryl Cumber Dance

Norton. 768 pp. $35

When asked about "the coldest day" ever, one storyteller in Zora Neale Hurston's collection Every Tongue Got to Confess recounted the time it was so cold down at the "jook" (nightclub) that when people talked, the conversation froze up. One man gathered up the frozen words and put them in a sack. At home he poured them out before a fire. When the words thawed out, his wife heard them, realized where he'd been, and left him. He learned the hard way that those who try to capture the spoken word need to handle it with care.