Public domain photo of Zora Neale Hurston, by Carl Van Vechten

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)

A selective list of online literary criticism for the African American novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars and articles published in peer-reviewed sources


main page | 20th-century literature | african american literature | harlem renaissance | 20th-century women writers


introduction & biography

Their Eyes Were Watching God. Selected for "The Big Read," Erika Koss, editor. Contents: Readers Guide contains Introduction, Historical Context, About the Author, Other Works/Adaptations, Discussion Questions, Bibliography; Teacher's Guide contains Schedule/Lesson Plans, Capstone Project Ideas, Essay Topics; and an audio radio program. National Endowment for the Arts.

"A Society of One: Zora Neale Hurston, American contrarian." By Claudia Roth Pierpont, in the New Yorker 17 Feb. 1997.

"Zora Neale Hurston's Barracoon Tells the Story of the Slave Trade's Last Survivor." By Anna Diamond, in the Smithsonian 2 May 2018.

"The Zora Neale Hurston Plays at the Library of Congress." Presentation on Hurston from the Library of Congress, includes a timeline, photos of Hurston, and scanned images of several of her plays.

Johnson, Yvonne. "Zora Neale Hurston." An introduction to Hurston from the Literary Encyclopedia, 04 March 2005 [subscription service].


literary criticism

Batker, Carol. "'Love me like I like to be': the sexual politics of Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, the classic blues and the Black Women's Club movement." African American Review 32, 2 (Summer 1998) pp 199-213 [preview or purchase at jstor].

Burrows, Stuart. "'Your heard her, you ain't blind': Seeing what's said in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Novel: A Forum on Fiction 34 (Summer 2001) [preview or purchase at jstor].

Carme, Manuel. "Mule Bone: Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston's dream deferred of an African-American theatre of the black word." African American Review 35 (Spring 2001) [Questia subscription service].

Ciuba, Gary. "The worm against the word: The hermeneutical challenge in Hurston's Jonah's Gourd Vine. On Hurston as a "preacher," beginning with her first novel. African American Review 34, 1 (Spring 2000) pp 119-33 [preview or purchase at jstor].

Clarke, Deborah. "'The porch couldn't talk for looking': Voice and vision in Their Eyes Were Watching God. African American Review 35, 4 (Winter 2001) pp 595-619 [preview or purchase at jstor].

Emery, Amy Fass. "The Zombie in/as the text: Zora Neale Hurston's Tell My Horse" [republished as Voodoo Gods. An Inquiry into Native Myths and Magic in Jamaica and Haiti ]. African American Review 39, 3 (Fall 2005) pp. 327-336 [preview or purchase at jstor].

Heard, Matthew. "Dancing is dancing no matter who is doing it": Zora Neale Hurston, literacy, and contemporary writing pedagogy. College Literature 34 (Winter 2007) [preview at the muse].

Jackson, Chuck. Waste and Whiteness: Zora Neale Hurston and the Politics of Eugenics (on Jonah's Gourd Vine, "Gilded Six-Bits," and "Sweat.") African American Review 34, 4 (Winter 2000) pp 639-60 [preview or purchase at jstor].

Johnson, Maria V. "'The world in a jug and the stopper in hand':'Their Eyes' as blues performance" (on Their Eyes Were Watching God). African American Review 32, 3 (Fall 1998) pp 401-14 [preview or purchase at jstor].

Jirousek, Lori. "'That Commonality of Feeling': Hurston, Hybridity, and Ethnography." African American Review 38 (Fall 2004) [Questia subscription service].

Pavlic, Edward M. "'Papa Legba, Ouvrier Barriere Por Moi Passer': Esu in Their Eyes & Zora Neale Hurston's Diasporic Modernism." African American Review 38 (Spring 2004) [Questia subscription service].

Simmons, Ryan. "'The hierarchy itself': Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and the sacrifice of narrative authority." African American Review 36, 2 (Summer 2002) [Questia subscription service].

Thompson, Mark Christian. "National Socialism and Blood-Sacrifice in Zora Neale Hurston's Moses, Man of the Mountain. African American Review 38, 3 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 395-415 [preview or purchase at jstor].

Trefzer, Annette. "Possessing the Self: Caribbean Identities in Zora Neale Hurston's Tell My Horse." African American Review 34, 2 (Summer 2000) [Questia subscription service].

Trombold, John. "The Minstrel Show Goes to the Great War: Zora Neale Hurston's Mass Cultural Other." MELUS (Spring 1999) [preview or purchase at jstor].

Weathers, Glenda B. "Biblical trees, biblical deliverance: literary landscapes of Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison." African American Review 39, 1/2 (Spring-Summer 2005) [Questia subscription service].


teaching materials

"Zora Neale Hurston," ed. Robert Hemenway. A brief teaching guide, her themes, style, audience. From educational publisher Heath.

Teachers resources for Their Eyes Were Watching God created by C-Span for their 2002 American Writers II series.

"Folktales of Zora Neale Hurston." A guide for teaching Zora Neale Hurston, from the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute.


main page | 20th-century literature | African American literature | 20th-century women writers


1998-2018 by Jan Pridmore