Their Eyes Were Watching God Book Report

Words: 762
Pages: 4

Their Eyes Were Watching God Background Work
1. The definition of folklore is “the traditional beliefs, customs, and stories of a community, passed through the generations by word of mouth.” This applies to Hurston because she traveled extensively and immersed herself in local cultural practices in the places she traveled, learning their way of life and their stories.
2. The definition of local color is “the customs, manners of speech, dress, or other typical features of a place or period that contribute to its particular color.” I am looking at number 11 on the background information sheet, and it mentions the Jim Crow laws. I am going to predict that local color applies to Hurston or her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God in how White Southerners treated newly freed Black Southerners during the Jim Crow period. I’m going to assume that treating Black’s badly would be part of the
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The Harlem Renaissance applies to Hurston as that is the literary movement that she was a part of. She arrived in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance’s peak and shortly after, became a major writer and its center. She disagreed with philosophies such as Communism and the New Deal reforms Franklin Delano Roosevelt created, supported by many of her colleagues during the Harlem Renaissance.
5. Hurston’s political views in her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God was met with resistance from many leading Harlem Renaissance authors, including Richard Wright. Wright condemned her novel, saying that “Miss Hurston seems to have no desire whatsoever to move in the direction of serious fiction…”
6. Alice Walker would be an important woman in the fact that she would be one of the women that “revived” Hurston’s work, bringing it back to light. She would be greatly influenced by Hurston’s work, “rescuing Hurston from obscurity.” In contrast to when the novel was first published, Their Eyes Were Watching God is now said to be one of the best English-language novels published since