The brook laughed and sang. When it encountered hard places in its bed, it hurled its water in sparkling dance figures up into the moonlight.
          It sang louder, louder; danced faster, faster, with a coquettish splash! at the vegetation on its banks.
          At last it danced boisterously into the bosom of the St. John’s, upsetting the whispering hyacinths who shivered and blushed, drunk with the delight of moon kisses.

So begins Hurston’s Magnolia Flower.  Just one of six insightful, tragic, yet sometimes even laugh-out-loud funny stories, that Betye Saar chose to illustrate with six glowing multi-colored serigraphs of incredible depth and power.  Zora Neale Hurston, one of America’s foremost writers is here matched with Saar, one of America’s most important artists. The stories take place from the time of slavery to 1930’s and 1940’s Harlem and small-town Florida. They range from courtroom drama to misadventure and comedy.

Betye Saar chose the paper, handmade of cotton and cinnamon as well as the deep brown ink for the text. She then wrote the Afterword!  Not yet finished, she designed the binding of bark and brown leather. The book is protected by a lined and hinged box, covered in brown linen the color of the leather and the type.