About this episode

This episode celebrates Zora Neale Hurston's commitment to her literary principles against societal pressures.

This episode celebrates the conviction of Zora Neale Hurston in holding to her principles in spite of pressure from both the literary world and leaders within the Harlem Renaissance to write in a fashion that was both palatable and expressive of the black grief and pain of American racism. Though Zora acknowledged that Black Americans experienced hardships associated with prejudice, she did not believe it was the predominant experience that should be expressed in literature. For Zora, Black people were joy and beauty, intelligence and love and in no great measure were we robbed of presence and prestige because of the divisions of segregation. Therefore, her writings in the 1920’s and 30’s were a deviation from the harsher realities portrayed by other authors such as Richard Wright. Additionally, as an anthropologist, Zora held to the dialect and vernacular of the subjects she interviewed despite urgings to make the text ‘tidier’ for the reader. Rather, Zora chronicled the accounts of her subjects unchanged from how they were delivered to her. These choices unfortunately had a deleterious impact on her work and though she saw great success with ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’, she…

People in this episode

Host: Nurah Muhammad

Topics covered

• literature
• Harlem Renaissance
• Black identity
• anthropology
• cultural expression

Keywords

• Zora Neale Hurston
• literary principles
• Harlem Renaissance
• Black literature
• cultural identity

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Their Eyes Were Watching God, Barracoon

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