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Typical Student
English 102.09
Prof L Adam Mekler
May 11, 2009
Zora Neale Hurston, representative of the Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem renaissance was a big turning point for African Americans of the 1920s into
the early 1930s, in which it was the first time African American literature was taken seriously.
Writers of the Harlem Renaissance gave diverse artistic expressions to the African American
experience, interests in the African American experience in Africa and the American south and
strong senses of racial pride. Zora Neale Hurston had traveled the “American South” and the
Caribbean, collecting stories from the different people residing within those areas. By taking the
trips is helped Hurston develop her metaphorical language, story-telling abilities, and the
portraying of the southern black culture in the United States of America. Through Zora Neale
Hurston’s literary techniques and writing style, she is considered one of the best and most
influential African American female writers of the Harlem Renaissance and to African American
literature.
Zora Neale Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama, and was raised in Eatonville,
Florida, which was the first incorporated all-black town in the United States. Later in her years
she was educated at Howard University, Barnard College, and Columbia University, where she
studied anthropology. After completing college she then took her studies back home, which
influenced her later output in fiction and folklore. Although Zora Neale Hurston was a fiction
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writer, her words gave the power in which the reader can experience the same perspective of the
character, which also shows her metaphorical language. When describing the life of a character,
Hurston would apply metaphors to the character’s life, or how they character is thinking. In
Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, she describes how, Janie, the main character, views
her life. “Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed,
things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches” (Bremer, 55). By using such
words and then placing them in such an order, creates a deep type of connection with Janie, and
gives the reader a closer relationship with the character. In another one of her short-stories, The
Gilded Six-Bits, Hurston describes the setting of the main characters’ residence. “It was a Negro
yard around a Negro house in a Negro settlement that looked to the payroll of the G and G
Fertilizer works for its support” (major, 67). Her use of the word “negro” gives some type of
image in the reader’s mind because of the short-story takes place in the time of the 20th century.
Also with that it lets the reader’s imagination wonder, and with Hurston’s words in such a
statement, like the quote above makes her so famous in all of her pieces of writing.
At the time Hurston was in college she was studying anthropology and working under the
German anthropologist, Dr. Frank Boaz. When Zora Neale Hurston completed college, she
decided to travel to the Caribbean islands, and the southern part of the United States, which she
referred to as the “American South”. Using her skills from her studies in anthropology, Hurston
collected folklore stories in many of the Caribbean islands, which in return helped develop her
story-telling abilities. In one of her stories, Tell My Horse, she describes the folk customs of
Haiti, and Jamaica, to such an extent, the reader can create a picture-perfect image. The book is
based off of Zora Neale Hurston’s personal experience in Haiti and Jamaica, during her visits in
the 1930s, instead of Hurston being an observer of voodoo practices, she was a participate and
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experience traveling into the dark world of voodoo. The novel creates a colorful picture of the
ceremonies, customs, and superstitions of the Haitian and Jamaican custom. One of her bestknown folklore collections based on her field research in the American South was, Mules and
Men, which tells about her return to her hometown of Eatonville, Florida. “Dr. Boas asked me
where I wanted to work and I said, “Florida,” and gave, as my big reason, that “Florida is a place
that draws people, white people from all the world and negroes from every southern state surely
and some from the north and west” (critical essays, 45). In the story, Mules and Men, you follow
Zora Neale Hurston as she interacts with some old friends, and meets new ones along her trip.
The friends and people she meets are all story tellers and share their life experience of being an
African American in the rural South. In her most famous book, Their Eyes Were Watching God,
she lets the reader experience life as an African American woman in the American South, and
the struggles she endures to find her identity. “I ran off to keep house with you in the wonderful
way. But you wasn’t satisfied with me the way I was…. The young girl was gone, but a
handsome woman had taken her place” (South in Black, 67). At this part in the story, Janie, the
main character, is free from her controlling and abusive husband, who has just passed away.
When continuing to read the story, the reader, begins to establish a closer bond with the
character. Although, it maybe a possibility that one may understand or know exactly what Janie
goes through, but similar relations can be a factor in the closer bond. Zora Neale Hurston’s way
of writing and her words, it seems, have powers of the reader’s emotions, and can cause the
emotions to match with that of the main character, Janie.
In every novel, short-story, or piece that Zora Neale Hurston has written, she always
portrays the lifestyle of an African American in the American South, or the customs of the
African descendants, and the Caribbean. For instance in the short story, Sweat, the story follows
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the lifestyle of a couple, who are miserably married. The first introduction is of the wife, Delia
Jones, who works as a washwoman for a living. “But she was a washwoman, and Monday
mornings meant a great deal to her… She squatted on the kitchen floor beside the great pile of
clothes, sorting them into small heaps according to color” (Critical essays, 75). Continuing the
reading, Delia’s story is told, and her husband, Sykes, is introduced as an ungrateful, rude, verbal
and physical abusive man. However karma takes toll and the “shackles” are removed from
Delia’s wrists when Sykes is dead due to a snake bite, which is the same snake he used to play
with Delia’s fright of the reptile creature. Many critics say that Zora Neale Hurston makes
readers thirsty for the next page, and what the next page beholds. Hurston is very detailed in this
short-story, right down to the very confusing speech of an African American living in the South
in the 20th century. “Sykes, you quit grindin’ dirt into these clothes! How can Ah git through by
Sat’day if Ah don’t start on Sunday?” (Interpretations, 234). Continuing to read the short-story,
the speech does not get any better, and may cause for a second or third time of what was just
read.
The writers of the Harlem Renaissance all portray expressions of the African American
lifestyle in the American South, either by publishing magazines, newsletters, poetry, music, or
books. However what makes each one of them different and special is how they input their own
literary style that is how Zora Neale Hurston became a famous writer. Zora Neale Hurston input
her metaphorical language, story-telling abilities, and the portraying of the southern black culture
in the United States of America, thus making herself stand out from all the other writers, and
because of her style, the novels that she has written are still being read into the present day.
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Work Cited
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Bremer, Sidney H. “home in Harlem, New York: Lessons from the Harlem Renaissance
writers.” Special topic: African and African American Literature 105 (1990)
Major, Clarence. Dark and Feeling Black American writers and their work. New York:
Third P, 1974.
Critical essays on Zora Neale Hurston. New York: G. K. Hall, Prentice Hall International,
1998.
Jenkins, McKay, South in Black and white race, sex and literature in the 1940s. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina P, 1999.
Harold., Bloom,. Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston (Bloom's Modern
Critical Interpretations). New York: Chelsea House, 2008.