In this blog post, we’ll explore Zora Neale Hurston’s life and work, and how Alice Walker, along with Black feminism and academia, brought her back from being a hidden master in literary history to a central figure.
Rediscovered Artists: Bach, de La Tour, Hurston
There are people who fade from public memory after their passing, only to make a spectacular comeback when suddenly thrust back into the spotlight. Johann Sebastian Bach, who composed numerous works of sacred music while serving as organist and choir director at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, saw his scores gather dust after his death because no one performed them. However, he made a spectacular comeback as the greatest Baroque composer in 1829 when Mendelssohn performed the “St. Matthew Passion,” a work that had not been performed for a century.
Georges de La Tour built a reputation as a court painter to Louis XIII, but was completely forgotten after his death. It was not until 263 years later, in 1915, that he was rediscovered by the German art historian Hermann Bosch and recognized as one of France’s greatest painters.
Zora Neale Hurston began her literary career during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and published several novels in the 1930s, but she was buried in a cemetery without even a headstone. It wasn’t until 1975, when Alice Walker brought her back into the spotlight, that she was once again recognized as a leading figure in Black women’s literature. While some, like Bach, have become household names, and others, like de La Tour, are gradually gaining recognition, Hurston remains a relatively unfamiliar figure, particularly to readers in Korea. Who exactly is Zora Neale Hurston, who occupies such an important place in the lineage of Black women’s literature—a lineage that extends from Toni Morrison, the first Black Nobel Prize-winning author, to Alice Walker, author of ‘The Color Purple’?
The Life and Works of Zora Neale Hurston
Hurston was born in 1891 in Notsalga, Alabama, and at the age of three, she moved with her father—a Baptist minister—to Eatonville, Florida, the first African American self-governing city in the United States. She considered Eatonville her hometown and sometimes even referred to it as her birthplace. Her father later became mayor of Eatonville, and her childhood there was reflected in various ways in her works. After her mother passed away and her father remarried, Hurston received no financial support from him; she worked her way through college, graduating from Howard University and Barnard College. Majoring in cultural anthropology in college, she also studied Black folklore as an anthropologist alongside contemporary scholars such as Margaret Mead. Huston married Herbert Shinn, a jazz musician who later became a doctor, in 1927, but they divorced in 1931. In 1939, she married Albert Price, who was 25 years her junior, but they separated after only seven months.
When Hurston arrived in New York in 1925, the Harlem Renaissance was at its peak. She co-founded the literary magazine ‘Fire!!’ with writers such as Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman, and traveled throughout the Caribbean and the American South to study the cultural customs of those regions. Based on this research, she published the novel ‘Jonah’s Gourd Vine’ in 1934 and the nonfiction work ‘Mules and Men’—considered a classic of folk literature—in 1935. In 1937, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ was published, and in 1939, ‘Man of the Mountain’ followed, though these works did not receive much attention initially.
Her Black male contemporaries criticized her for using Black vernacular in her works, arguing that she was caricaturing Black culture to cater to white tastes, and some claimed her works lacked political themes. At the time, some Black writers, such as Ralph Ellison, were writing in explicit political language as part of the struggle to improve the status of Black people, and to them, Hurston’s works—which centered on love—seemed out of step with that struggle. In her later years, Hurston struggled with illness and financial hardship before passing away from heart disease in 1960 at a nursing home in Florida.
The renewed interest in Hurston emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, as courses on Black culture were introduced at American universities, fostering an academic environment conducive to the study of Black literature. In addition, the rise of Black feminism, led by figures such as Mary Helen Washington, Audre Lorde, and Alice Walker, provided an opportunity to rediscover Hurston. In particular, Alice Walker’s 1975 essay “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston,” published in ‘Ms.’ magazine, served as a catalyst for Hurston’s reappraisal. Through an essay, Walker learned that Hurston was buried in an unmarked grave in Miami; she immediately sought out the grave and wrote about the experience. In that piece, Walker argued that the Black community’s failure to recognize Hurston was tantamount to “throwing away a genius.”
In 1977, Robert Hemmingway received a federal grant to write Hurston’s biography, and in 1978, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ was republished. In 1975, the Modern Language Association held a special seminar focusing on Hurston, and in 1981, the Zora Neale Hurston Society was established at Morgan State University. Containing themes and content that can be discussed across various academic disciplines, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ gradually came to occupy a unique position in African American and women’s literature, and has now firmly established itself as a literary classic. The work was also named one of the “100 Greatest English-Language Novels Published Since 1923” by ‘Time’ magazine in 2005.
‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ is an autobiographical novel in which the protagonist, Janie Crawford—a Black woman in her early forties—recounts her life to her friend Phoebe.
The first part of the novel recounts Janie’s childhood and her first marriage. Janie’s grandmother, Nanny, lived as a slave before Emancipation; she became pregnant by her master and gave birth to a daughter, Lippy. Fleeing her jealous mistress, Nanny sent her daughter to school after the Civil War ended, striving to ensure she would have a better life than she had. However, Lippy was sexually assaulted by a schoolteacher and became pregnant with Janie; after Janie was born, Lippy turned to alcohol, spent her nights out, and eventually left home, abandoning Janie. Nanny transfers all the hopes she had held for Lippy onto Janie. When Janie turns sixteen and Nanny sees her kissing a neighbor boy, Johnny Taylor, she resolves to marry Janie off to Logan Kilix, a man who owns a farm and a house, so that Janie will not lead a life of exploitation by men.
One spring day, Janie watches bees pollinating a pear tree and concludes that marriage is a natural process and must be accompanied by love. Although she had little interest in Logan or marriage itself, she believed that love would grow once she was married, so she married Logan in accordance with her grandmother’s wishes. However, Logan did not respect Janie and treated her merely as a laborer who helped with household chores.
Shortly thereafter, Nanny passes away, and Janie follows the eloquent and ambitious Jody Stacks to Eatonville.
The second part of the novel deals with her married life with Jody Stax. Upon arriving in Eatonville, Stax buys up nearby land, runs a general store, and becomes the town’s mayor; while he does not make Janie do hard labor, he treats her as a sort of trophy wife to show off to others. As a means of consolidating his power, he demands that Janie maintain the image of the perfect wife and controls her, preventing her from speaking with others or expressing her own thoughts. He even controls Janie’s clothing and hairstyle and mercilessly berates her for the slightest mistake.
As time passes, Jody publicly humiliates Janie by bringing up her age—she’s in her thirties—in an attempt to hide the fact that he is growing old. Janie lives as an obedient wife, keeping her true thoughts hidden, but eventually shatters the villagers’ illusions about his power by pointing out that he is indeed growing old. Afterward, Jody moves his belongings downstairs and refuses to let Janie into his room. Though Janie tries to reconcile with him before he dies—as he lies bedridden with kidney disease—he cannot accept the fact that he is dying and continues to blame her. Finally, Janie tells him that because he never set her free, she never truly knew who he was, despite having lived with him for so many years. Immediately after hearing this, Jody passes away.
The third part of the novel tells the story of her love and marriage to T-Cake. After Stax’s death, Janie becomes financially independent and is constantly harassed by suitors. Among them were some who were quite wealthy and others with decent jobs, but she didn’t give any of them a second glance. Then, a young, itinerant gambler named T-Cake appears before her. At first, Janie doubts his love because of the difference in their ages and wealth, but when she sees how sincerely he cares for and respects her, she falls in love.
The two sell the store, go to Jacksonville to get married, and then move to the Everglades. There, they work in the bean fields during the day and spend their nights socializing with the swamp people, chatting, dancing, and having fun. Janie believes she is finally living the married life she had always dreamed of, united by love. However, a massive Okeechobee hurricane sweeps through the Everglades, and while saving Janie from the floodwaters, T-Cake is bitten by a rabid dog and contracts rabies.
Janie nurses him devotedly, but T-Cake’s condition steadily worsens, and he eventually succumbs to uncontrollable madness, attempting to shoot Janie with a pistol. In self-defense, Janie shoots and kills him with a shotgun. Charged with murder, Janie stands trial, and some of T-Cake’s Black male friends appear to testify against her. Surprisingly, the local white women support Janie, and the all-white jury acquits her. After T-Cake’s funeral, Janie returns to Eatonville.
Above all, this is a love story. Through her first marriage to Logan Kilix, her second to Jody Stax, and her third to T-Cake, Janie finally comes to understand the meaning of love and happiness. However, this novel is not merely a story about the search for true love. It is also a coming-of-age story in which Janie establishes her sense of self and finds independence.
Janney, who was once an inexperienced, naive teenager, gradually transforms into a confident and self-reliant woman as she faces various challenges in her relationships with her husbands. Each marriage teaches her a different lesson. Through her experience with Logan, Janie learns to stand up against injustice and to value herself. She resolves to protect herself and leaves Logan, who does not respect her.
In her marriage to Jody Stax, although Jody does not physically abuse Janie, he controls her, preventing her from freely expressing her thoughts, and forces her to cover her hair with a headscarf, thereby suppressing her feminine charm. Only as Jody lay on his deathbed does Janie pour out everything she had wanted to say all along in her long-suppressed voice, and after Jody’s death, she reveals the hair she had hidden under the headscarf, reclaiming her identity as a woman. In her relationship with T-Cake, Janie feels love and happiness as she freely expresses her thoughts and is treated as an equal; through him, she becomes a mature, confident, and independent woman.
Janney’s journey toward establishing her sense of self and becoming an independent woman coincides with her journey to find her own voice. Until she marries Logan at her grandmother’s behest, the teenage Janney has no voice of her own. Although she witnesses the perfect union of a bee and a pear blossom and feels a desire for that kind of love herself, Janney is unable to articulate exactly what she wants. Both before and after her marriage to Logan, as well as during her time with Jody, she either lacks a voice or has it suppressed.
It is only just before Jody’s death that Janie pours out the words she had kept deeply buried in her heart, and it is only while living with T-Cake that she is finally able to speak freely in her own voice. She could listen to her neighbors’ stories, laugh to her heart’s content, and even join in the conversation if she wished. She was able to create her own remarkable story based on the stories she heard from others.
The obstacles Janie had to overcome fall into two main categories. One is the oppression caused by the white-dominated social structure of the United States, and the other is the oppression caused by the male-centered patriarchy that exists within the Black community itself. Janie’s grandmother, Nanny, lived as a slave to white people before the Emancipation Proclamation and experienced the oppression and suffering of that era firsthand. Through Nanny’s recollections, the work calmly reveals the history of oppression that Black people have endured in a white-dominated society.
When a hurricane struck, Janie and T-Cake climbed onto a bridge to escape the floodwaters, but the bridge was already occupied by white people, leaving no room for Black people. Even in a disaster situation, the racial hierarchy remained in place, and discrimination continued at funerals and burials. While the bodies of white people were placed in coffins and buried, the bodies of Black people were treated by having quicklime sprinkled on them before being buried in the ground. Hurston does not protest the inequality and oppression faced by Black people loudly or seek sympathy; rather, by narrating the events in a matter-of-fact and detached tone, she reveals the cruelty of that reality all the more sharply.
Some Black writers of her time criticized Hurston for caricaturing Black culture and catering to white tastes. However, Hurston did not limit the focus of her critique to the dominant white culture; she expanded it to include the patriarchal, male-dominated culture within Black society itself. The oppression inflicted on Black women was twofold. Nanny says, “A white man puts down his load and tells a Black man to pick it up. Since he has no choice, the Black man picks up the load, but he doesn’t actually carry it. He just passes it on to the women in his family. As far as I know, Black women are the pack mules of this world,” she says, succinctly revealing the harsh reality faced by Black women.
The oppression that a male-dominated Black society imposes on Black women manifests in ways that treat wives as laborers, prevent them from expressing their own thoughts, and forbid them from displaying their feminine charm. This oppression is evident on an individual level, as seen with Logan and Jodi, and on a collective level, such as in the way Janie conducts Jodi and T-Cake’s funerals or the scenes where the men of the Everglades treat her with hostility in court. Conversely, the fact that white women in the courtroom actually support Janie demonstrates the potential for solidarity among women that transcends the black-white power structure. When Janie challenges patriarchal authority, Black men collectively seek to punish her, and she is only readmitted into the community by consciously conforming to patriarchal norms. Janie’s journey of self-discovery, as she overcomes these dual obstacles, resembles the growth of Celie in Alice Walker’s ‘The Color Purple’.
Formally, a striking feature of this work is its narrative style, which employs Black vernacular. Like a folklorist recording folk tales, Hurston sought to faithfully reproduce the language used by Black people of her time within the work. Black English possesses grammatical characteristics distinct from standard English, such as unique vocabulary, verb tense usage, and double negatives; Hurston’s writing style, which even captures the pronunciation, may feel somewhat unfamiliar not only to native speakers but also to readers from other English-speaking countries.
For example, the following are examples of dialect expressions found in the work.
“Naw, Ah thank yuh. Nothin’ couldn’t ketch me these few steps Ah’m going. Anyhow, mah husband tell me say no first-class booger would have me.”
While Hurston’s contemporaries sometimes criticized her use of dialect as an apolitical attempt to elicit sympathy from white readers, the novel acquired a unique flavor and rhythm—hard to find in the works of other Black authors—precisely because she incorporated the dialect’s distinctive grammar, pronunciation, and idiomatic expressions into her writing. However, due to the nature of translation, there are limitations to how fully these linguistic nuances can be conveyed. If you’d like to experience the charm of Black dialect firsthand, you might enjoy watching the film adaptation ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ (2005), produced by Oprah Winfrey, to get a feel for the atmosphere.
