Harlem Renaissance Reflection

The Harlem Renaissance was a time of diversity in art and literature. “Their Eyes Were Watching God” is a story about a woman who finds her way through society, and this journey that she takes has strong reflections of the time and place that the author wrote the story on. Hurston reflected some of the aspects which she saw on a daily basis in the Harlem Renaissance in her work. However for all the time she reflected over parts of the Harlem Renaissance there were some parts and aspects of the story which clearly were meant as a way to depart and get out of the mindset of the Harlem Renaissance. Through an understanding of the Harlem Renaissance it is clear that Zora Neale Hurston’s writing is both a reflection and a departure of the Harlem

An example of this departure from the values of the Harlem Renaissance can be found in chapter 16 when she writes “Ah don’t go in no nigger store tuh buy nothin’ neither. Colored folks don’t know nothin’ bout no business.” (page 141-142) This is a clear departure from one of the main values of the Harlem Renaissance as racism was not a value that the people living in Harlem appreciated. They fought against racism and left the south to avoid it, and as they are now living in Harlem they do their best to avoid racism, and yet Zora Neale Hurston writes a whole chapter on Mrs. Turner, a extremely racist character. However she may have done this because her patron was a white person and her primary audience was white people, and because there was still allot of racism in America as a whole in the early to mid 1900s, this is a reflection of the attitudes in America, but a strong departure from the values of the Harlem Renaissance. Another clear departure from the Harlem Renaissance is every piece of dialogue throughout the entire book. This is because they are talking in a southern dialect. This is a difference from the location of Harlem, which is a neighborhood in New York. She is reflecting where they came from and the history of black people in slavery through this reference of the south. A aspect of their history, which many people living in Harlem would rather not have on their mind, or be reminded of as some of the people living there had moved from the south themselves. In the Harlem Renaissance black people worked to portray themselves as intellectual and equal to white people and a return to the southern dialect would not go along with the society that they were trying to