Zora Neale Hurston

Hurston, Zora N. "Zora Neale Huston." The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David L. Lewis. New York: Penguin Viking, 1994. 695-728. Print.

The first thing I thought of when reading this little story was Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird, despite the race differences. Both are carefree, fun young girls who don’t generally think about consequences when they run off to do something. With that said, I really enjoyed reading Hurston’s writings. The way she completely ignores race issues between whites and blacks works really well to create a world where people live side by side without addressing the issue of black or white. I think that, despite not writing directly about it, though, Hurston is making a stronger comment about the racial divide than many of the other author’s we’ve studied thus far. Instead of preaching to the choir like so many of the other writers did, Huston writes about a world that doesn’t take race into account. In Color Struck, the issue of race is addressed not as a problem between whites and blacks (there are whites and blacks riding the train together as if it were nothing), but as a problem between different kinds of blacks (mulatto vs. completely black). The same issue is brought up in Jonah’s Gourd Vine, between the all-black stepfather and his half-white stepson.

I’m not sure what to make of Hurston’s focus on inter-racial problems, rather than the intra-racial issues between whites and blacks. Her own upbringing is a bit of insight into this, since many of her works seem to reflect her own life in some way or other. Her message, I believe, is that inter-racial problems are more poignant than the overall issue of white and black. By addressing and solving the problems within the different sects of blackness, Huston seems to believe that unification is possible and will lead to a better chance against the intra-racial issues that she ignores. I wonder if, had black unification occurred in her lifetime, she would have switched gears and addressed the issues of white and black.