Politics of Their Eyes
Hurston rejected the Racial Uplift efforts to present African Americans in a way that would accommodate the cultural standards of the White majority. Yet she also asserted her work as distinct from the work of fellow Harlem Renaissance writers she described as the “sobbing school of Negrohood” that portrayed the lives of black people as constantly miserable, downtrodden and deprived. Instead, Hurston celebrated the rural, southern African-American communities as she found them. In addition, Hurston refused to censor women’s sexuality, writing in beautiful innuendo to embrace the physical dimension to her main character’s romances.
Read more about this topic: Their Eyes Were Watching God
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“From the beginning, the placement of [Clarence] Thomas on the high court was seen as a political end justifying almost any means. The full story of his confirmation raises questions not only about who lied and why, but, more important, about what happens when politics becomes total war and the truth—and those who tell it—are merely unfortunate sacrifices on the way to winning.”
—Jane Mayer, U.S. journalist, and Jill Abramson b. 1954, U.S. journalist. Strange Justice, p. 8, Houghton Mifflin (1994)