Title: How Alice Walker Rediscovered Zora Neale Hurston
Headings: How Alice Walker Rediscovered Zora Neale Hurston
How Alice Walker Rediscovered Zora Neale Hurston
Making her mark in the Harlem Renaissance
In search of Zora Neale Hurston
The influence of Eatonville
Searching for Zora’s grave
Ripe for rediscovery
Further reading and sources

Content: . . . . . . . . . . Zora Neale Hurston books on Bookshop.org*
Zora Neale Hurston page on Amazon*
. . . . . . . . . . Ripe for rediscovery
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character, Janie Crawford, gains her freedom and gains her power after the death of her most-loved husband, Tea-Cake. This novel challenges societal patriarchy through one African-American woman’s journey of self-discovery. Walker found these ideals and values in Hurston’s literature worthy of being presented to a new generation of readers. Hurston’s writings seemed ripe for rediscovery in the 1970s, a time when social movements were re-envisioning the relationship between gender and race, and searching for a feminine identity not defined by a patriarchal society. Her writings, especially Their Eyes Were Watching God, were controversial in their time, partly due to the use of Black southern vernacular. Some critics felt that this served only to ridicule the Black community and provide a source of entertainment for white readers. But in reality, Hurston was expressing affection for the people she grew up with. In Walker’s collection of essays, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens (1983), she writes as if she is the metaphorical daughter of Hurston and other great African American female writers before her.