Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston was a significant figure in the Harlem Renaissance as a writer. She wrote several pieces but most significantly the piece called Their Eyes was Watching God. In Their Eyes were Watching God she gave us the story of Janie and her life where Janie went through many trials and troubles. She was also thought of as a controversial writer because her style of writing didn’t exactly help the goal of the Harlem Renaissance. Most writers illuminated the struggles of blacks in the white America. She on the other hand explained struggles of blacks in the black America. Unlike Langston Hughes explaining how he felt blacks couldn’t get a chance, she explained that blacks sometimes held each other down. She also wrote about the struggles

Langston Hughes wrote Let America be America Again explaining that he was never an equal or free in America. He also didn’t just focus on blacks, he also wrote “I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek.” (Hughes 8). Hughes explained that nobody in America is treated right unless a wealthy white man. On the other hand Hurston explained struggles of trying to get out of her own neighborhood. She explained that the men thought of women as mules. Janie’s nanny said “De nigger woman is de mule of

the world so fur as ah can see.” (Hurston 2) as though that’s all she was treated as through her years. Hurston wrote as if women needed men to be guided through life. Many thought Zora’s writing didn’t fit with the Harlem renaissance because she wrote about black struggles but in black communities. She as a younger individual went through many struggles in the white community. Growing Zora dealt with her mother dying in 1904. Her father remarried and barely had time to take care of his children. Zora got into a fistfight with her stepmother and almost killed her. These were types of struggles she used to write in her literary pieces. She used her own downfalls to make interesting pieces and barely used the blame of whites. On the other hand