The Gilded Six-Bits
First published in Story magazine in 1933, The Gilded Six Bits is Zora Neale Hurston's celebrated short story about Joe and Missie May Banks, a young Black couple in the all Black town of Eatonville, Florida. Hurston opens with a portrait of an affectionate Saturday afternoon ritual in which Joe comes home from the fertilizer plant and tosses silver dollars on the porch for his wife to find. Their happy marriage is unsettled when a flashy outsider named Otis D. Slemmons opens an ice cream parlor in town, flaunting a gold piece on his watch chain that turns out to be only gilded. The story tracks the slow, painful work of forgiveness across months and seasons, in language steeped in the Black Southern speech and folklore Hurston knew best. The story helped establish her reputation and led to the novel contract that produced Jonah's Gourd Vine.
What you might want to know about The Gilded Six-Bits
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Zora Neale Hurston's 1933 short story about a young Black couple in Florida and a betrayal that tests their marriage.
No, it is a standalone short story, often anthologized or paired with Hurston's other Eatonville fiction.
It shares the Eatonville setting and Hurston's interest in Black Southern speech, marriage, and women's lives.
The Gilded Six-Bits was written by Zora Neale Hurston, published in 1986 by Redpath Press.
The Gilded Six-Bits is 39 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Gilded Six-Bits takes most readers under an hour to finish.
The Gilded Six-Bits is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
