Zora Neal Hurston - Womanist Model

Zora Neale Hurston (1891 - 1960) was a scholar, writer, folklorist, performer and researcher whose trademark was her flamboyant behavior, outlandish research techniques, and unique woman centered assertiveness. Originally from Eatonville, Florida, Hurson was educated in Baltimore at Morgan Academy (Now Morgan University) and in Washington, DC at Howard University. She also attended Barnard College in New York. She was extremely active during the period that was labeled Harlem Renaissance Era (the twenties), a time during which, as Hurston calls it, "Nigeratti was in vogue."

While the twenties was a vibrant time for African American artists from all disciplines, it was also a time of multiple restrictions on the same artists. White patrons who supported African American artists also supported racism that dominated the thoughts of the audiences. Many artists were restricted to performing, writing and creating within the limits of their patrons/editors/audiences desires. Hurston, however, did not always yield completely to the dictates of her time, and did not accept the confining roles that writers, women, and people of color were supposed to assume. Hurston wrote in the late 1930's of the expectations of African American writers, for example, in an essay titled, "What White Publishers Won't Print." In her discussion she pointed out that they were more interested in publishing materials that maintained stereotypical images of African Americans than in publishing materials that challenged or did not support these images. Hurston also demonstrates in an essay entitled "How it Feels to be Colored Me" her resistance to being the "perfect darkie" that white audiences were seeking.

Hurston's work was negatively criticized by her white and black contemporaries for her daring and unconventional writing and behavior. Hurston was called the "perfect darkie" by Langston Hughes, for example, when she was, in fact, criticizing the same system that created the "perfect darkie" image. Her literature received negative reviews from white and black critics as well. Many considered Their Eyes Were Watching God insignificant, for instance, particularly because of it's use of southern black folk language and culture. It is also significant to consider that Hurston wrote about black characters who lived in a black town whose worlds were not influenced by white society - something that was not expected or accepted by the literary or society at the time.

Hurston's novel THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD (1939), consistent with Hurston's style, her novel broke traditional prescriptions for novels by women and by African Americans of the time. Janie Crawford, the novel's protagonist, married three times in search for self-identity or, as the narration terms it, "self-actualization." She resists oppression found in her marriages with assurance that there is something more to life and to love than what she had been taught. As Janie tells her story to her best friend, Phoebe, she simultaneously tells the readers of her journey to self-identification, including in her story the circumstances that made it necessary for her to have searched for self-identification in the first place.

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