Jonah’s Gourd Vine (Masterplots II: African American Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Zora Neale Hurston
- First Published: 1934
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Social realism
- Time of Work: The post-Civil War period through the early twentieth century
- Setting: Alabama and Florida
- Principal Characters: John Pearson, Lucy Potts Pearson, Judge Alf Pearson, Amy Crittenden, Ned Crittenden, Hattie Tyson, Sally Lovelace
- Genres: Long fiction, Social realism
- Subjects: African Americans, Power, personal or social, Sex or sexuality, Biracial people, South or Southerners, Twentieth century, Nineteenth century, Education or educators, Poverty or poor people, Ministry or ministers, Farms, farmers, or farming, Adultery, Death or dying, Florida, Alabama, Carpentry or carpenters, Judges
- Locales: South (U.S.), Alabama, Florida
The Novel
Jonah’s Gourd Vine is a thinly disguised biography of Zora Neale Hurston’s parents, whose names she barely veils in the novel. The story focuses on John Pearson’s rise from a poor, illiterate Alabama sharecropper to the powerful, well-to-do moderator of the Florida Baptist Convention, to his subsequent fall from power and grace, to his painful resurrection and death.
The narrative opens on a sharecropping farm near the Songahatchee River in Alabama several years after the emancipation. Amy and Ned Crittenden and their three sons, including John,...
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See Also:
Zora Neale Hurston (Cyclopedia of World Authors)Zora Neale Hurston (Short Fiction)Zora Neale Hurston (Long Fiction)Zora Neale Hurston (Dictionary of World Biography)Zora Neale Hurston (Identities and Issues)
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