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The rediscovery of Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, first published in 1937 but subsequently out-of-print for decades, marks one of the most dramatic chapters in African-American literature and Women's Studies. Its popularity owes much to the lyricism of the prose, the pitch-perfect rendition of black vernacular English, and the memorable characters--most notably, Janie Crawford. Collecting the most widely cited and influential essays published on Hurston's classic novel over the last quarter century, this Casebook presents contesting viewpoints by Hazel Carby, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Barbara Johnson, Carla Kaplan, Daphne Lamothe, Mary Helen Washington, and Sherley Anne Williams. The volume also includes a statement Hurston submitted to a reference book on twentieth-century authors in 1942. As it records the major debates the novel has sparked on issues of language and identity, feminism and racial politics, A Casebook charts new directions for future critics and affirms the classic status of the novel.
An analysis of the literary values of Hurston's novel, as well as its reception--from largely dismissive reviews in 1937, through a revival of interest in the 1960s and its recent establishment as a major American novel.
Zora Neale Hurston wrote her most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, while in Haiti on a trip funded by a Guggenheim fellowship to research the region’s transatlantic folk and religious culture; this work grounded what would become her ethnography Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica. The essays in Zora Neale Hurston, Haiti, and “Their Eyes Were Watching God” persuasively demonstrate that Hurston’s study of Haitian Voudoun informed the characterization, plotting, symbolism, and theme of her novel. Much in the way that Voudoun and its North American derivative Voodoo are syncretic religions, Hurston’s fiction enacts a syncretic, performative practice of reference, freely drawing upon Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian, and Haitian Voudoun mythologies for its political, aesthetic, and philosophical underpinnings. Zora Neale Hurston, Haiti, and “Their Eyes Were Watching God” connects Hurston’s work more firmly to the cultural and religious flows of the African diaspora and to the literary practice by twentieth-century American writers of subscripting in their fictional texts symbols and beliefs drawn from West and Central African religions.
Zora Neale Hurston emerged as a celebrated writer of the Harlem Renaissance, fell into obscurity toward the end of her life, yet is now recognized as a great American author. Her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is popular among general readers and is widely taught in universities, colleges, and secondary schools. A key text of African American and women's literature, it has also been studied by scholars interested in the 1930s, small-town life, modernism, folklore, and regionalism, and it has been viewed through the lenses of dialect theory, critical race theory, and transnational and diasporan studies.Considering the ubiquity of Hurston's work in the nation's classrooms, there have been surprisingly few book-length studies of it. This volume helps instructors situate Hurston's work against the various cultures that engendered it and understand her success as short story writer, playwright, novelist, autobiographer, folklorist, and anthropologist. Part 1 outlines Hurston's publication history and the reemergence of the author on the literary scene and into public consciousness. Part 2 first concentrates on various approaches to teaching Their Eyes, looking at Hurston's radical politics and use of folk culture and dialect; contemporary reviews of the novel, including contrary remarks by Richard Wright; Janie's search for identity in Hurston's all-black hometown, Eatonville; and the central role of humor in the novel. The essays in part 2 then take up Hurston's other, rarely taught novels, Jonah's Gourd Vine,Moses, Man of the Mountain, and Seraph on the Suwanee. Also examined here are Hurston's anthropological works, chief among them Mules and Men, a staple for many years on American folklore syllabi, and Tell My Horse, newly reconsidered in Caribbean and postcolonial studies.
Mrs. Spring Fragrance (1912) is a collection of short stories by Sui Sin Far. Inspired by her experience living among Chinese Americans in San Francisco and Seattle, Mrs. Spring Fragrance is considered one of the earliest works of fiction published in the United States by a woman of Chinese heritage. In “The Inferior Woman,” Mrs. Spring Fragrance encounters her neighbors, the Carmans, as they try to find someone to marry their son. While Mrs. Carman wants him to marry into a family of higher social standing, her son is in love with a local girl who works as a legal secretary. Known by Mrs. Carman as the “Inferior Woman,” she has risen through hard work and perseverance to achieve her position at the law firm. Sympathetic toward her neighbor’s son, Mrs. Spring Fragrance advocates on his behalf. “In the Land of the Free” is the story of a Chinese immigrant who is separated from her young son upon arrival due to insufficient paperwork. Exploring the struggles of this woman to reclaim her son, Sui Sin Far exposes the discrimination and hardships faced by Chinese Americans due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, illuminating the byzantine and restrictive immigration policies which sadly continue under a different guise in modern America. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Sui Sin Far’s Mrs. Spring Fragrance is a classic of Chinese American literature reimagined for modern readers.
A lush, disorienting novel, The Caretaker takes no prisoners as it explores the perils of devotion and the potentially lethal charisma of things Following the death of a renowned and eccentric collector—the author of Stuff, a seminal philosophical work on the art of accumulation—the fate of the privately endowed museum he cherished falls to a peripatetic stranger who had been his fervent admirer. In his new role as caretaker of The Society for the Preservation of the Legacy of Dr. Charles Morgan, this restive man, in service to an absent master, at last finds his calling. The peculiar institution over which he presides is dedicated to the annihilation of hierarchy: peerless antiquities commune happily with the ignored, the discarded, the undervalued and the valueless. What transpires as the caretaker assumes dominion over this reliquary of voiceless objects and over its visitors is told in a manner at once obsessive and matter-of-fact, and in language both cocooning and expansive. A wry and haunting tale, The Caretaker, like the interplanetary crystal that is one of the museum’s treasures, is rare, glistening, and of a compacted inwardness. Kafka or Shirley Jackson may come to mind, and The Caretaker may conjure up various genres—parables, ghost stories, locked-room mysteries—but Doon Arbus draws her phosphorescent water from no other writer’s well.
Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God highlights the vitality of African American culture. This casebook demonstrates how African Americans fashioned themselves individually and collectively to combat racism, classism, and sexism. With provocative documents that contextualize the complex issues of the novel, Lester provides an excellent resource for students and teachers first approaching the excitement and cultural flavor that define Hurston's novels. The casebook is an encyclopedia of African American folk culture that simultaneously presents historical, political, and social commentary on the relationships between men and women and between blacks and whites in America. Documents include interviews with people living in the South at the time of the novel's publication, poetry, rap, folktales, and sermons. Also included are original materials on ebonics, minstrel songs, the blues tradition, the novel in theatrical and dance performance, and materials on Hurston's hometown of Eatonville, Florida.
Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, although well received in its own day, was largely forgotten until the 1970s. The same thing was true of its author, who died in abject poverty. Fortunately, both this novel and most of Hurston's other works were eventually rediscovered, and Their Eyes is now seen as one of the most important books in twentieth-century American literature. This volume explores the book from numerous and diverse perspectives, including race, gender, and class; place it in a variety of historical and intellectual contexts; and give full attention to its remarkable artistry.
In a ground-breaking study of Zora Neale Hurston, Deborah Plant takes issue with current notions of Hurston as a feminist and earlier impressions of her as an intellectual lightweight who disregarded serious issues of race in American culture. Instead, Plant calls Hurston a "writer of resistance" who challenged the politics of domination both in her life and in her work. One of the great geniuses of the Harlem Renaissance, Hurston stands out as a strong voice for African American women. Her anthropological inquiries as well as her evocative prose provide today's readers with a rich history of African American folk culture - a folk culture through which Hurston expressed her personal and political strategy of resistance and self-empowerment. Through readings of Hurston's fiction and autobiographical writings, Plant offers one of the first book-length discussions of Hurston's personal philosophy of individualism and self-reliance. From a discussion of Hurston's preacher father and influential mother, whose guiding philosophy is reflected in the title of this book, to the influence of Spinoza and Nietzsche, Plant puts into perspective the driving forces behind Hurston's powerful prose.