Zora Neale Hurston

I am sympathetic to you because this is a convoluted question that seems to have very little to do with what Hurston is talking about in "How It Feels to be Colored Me." However, one could read her...

This short story has a David and Goliath-esque feel, although the plot is quite different; in "Spunk," the feeble Joe attacks the mighty Spunk from behind with a razor and is shot to death. The men...

Zora Neale Hurston discusses her attitude toward slavery in the essay "How it Feels to Be Colored Me." Rather surprisingly, the essay is humorous in tone and rejects the notion of slavery as an...

I think that my answer may be coming too late, but I'll still give it a shot... Zora Neale Hurston's 1928 short prose piece (I'm not sure that it's a formal essay, but there's nothing wrong with...

There are at least a couple of different texts in which Zora Neale Hurston describes Eatonville, Florida, a town where she grew up but also one in which she set her best-known novel, Their Eyes...

In her essay, "How It Feels to Be Colored Me," Zora Neale Hurston begins by describing her childhood in Eatonville, Florida—an all-black community. She recalls seeing passing white visitors,...

This is a term I've never come across before so I'm not sure exactly how it's usually applied. The phrase "local color" and the phrase "writer of color" are two terms that seem completely separate....

One of the most interesting things I have always remembered about Zora Neal Hurston is something very bold which she did--both as a woman and as an African-American. She was writing during the...

In Hurston's novel, sexuality is depicted as a rich, natural, and affirmative aspect of life. It's something that her heroine, Janie, enjoys when she's a young woman first learning about her...

In addition to the criticism for not writing protest literature, as ladyvols1 discusses very well, Hurston was also criticized more generally for her performance of black identity. Hurston was...

Numerous similarities exist between the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible and the story of Missie May and Joe in Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “The Gilded Six-Bits.” Among those similarities...

This quote is from the following passage, an excerpt from Zora Neale Hurston's “Characteristics of Negro Expression”: The primitive man exchanges descriptive words. His terms are all close...

In her Introduction and Afterword to Barracoon, editor Deborah G. Plant mentions several reasons for the delay in publication. Hurston’s original research had been commissioned by Carter Woodson,...

Absolutely! (And this is from a young mom who is very concerned about sheltering her children as long as she can! Ha!) Hurston's books, and most notably Their Eyes Were Watching God brings up...

Actually, black pride is not the immediate aim of Hurston in “How It Feels to Be Colored Me.” Hurston rather suggests a sense of self-pride throughout the essay. She says that growing up in...

In her essay "How It Feels to be Colored Me," Zora Neale Hurston mentions what she calls the "sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal." The...

Jump at the Sun: Zora Neale Hurston’s Cosmic Comedy is John Lowe’s scholarly analysis of Hurston’s work that focuses on its comedic aspects. Lowe argues that the elements of humor that Hurston uses...

Although she worked as an anthropologist for much of her life, Zora Neale Hurston is most famous for her writing, most especially her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, considered a classic of the...

On the face of it, it would seem that Delia (from the story "Sweat") is very different from the Hurston that declares that "sometimes she has no race." Delia is not given to that sort of...

Zora Neale Hurston was widely known as a writer and political activist during the Harlem Renaissance. However, there were many things that contributed to her lack of success during her lifetime....

After Delia finds the rattlesnake in her bedroom, she escapes the house and runs to the barn. She is so scared of the snake that she does not even feel safe on the ground, and so she climbs up into...

Local color refers to the customs, speech, clothing, and other cultural attributes of a place or time period that contribute to its characterization. Much of the early description of the setting...

In two of Hurston's novels Their Eyes Were Watching God and Jonah's Gourd Vine, the portrayal of marriage and women is one of hardship. The protagonist Janie of Their Eyes Were Watching God is...