Where to Start with Zora Neale Hurston: A Reading Guide
Where to start with Zora Neale Hurston — whether to begin with Their Eyes Were Watching God, Dust Tracks on a Road, or Mules and Men. A complete reading guide.
Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) is one of the most important figures in African American literary history — a Harlem Renaissance novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist whose work was largely forgotten at her death and rescued by Alice Walker and other feminists in the 1970s. Her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) is now recognised as one of the central texts of African American literature and of American women’s fiction; her anthropological collections of Black Southern folklore are essential documents of African American oral culture. She was extraordinary in life and is indispensable in retrospect.
Where to Start: Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
The essential Hurston — and one of the most celebrated American novels of the twentieth century. Janie Crawford, growing up in Florida in the early twentieth century, searches across three marriages for selfhood and love. Her first husband, Logan Killicks, is arranged by her grandmother for security; her second, Joe Starks, makes her the mayor’s wife but silences her in the process; her third, Tea Cake Woods, a younger man of little money but genuine spirit, finally allows Janie to become herself.
The novel is written in the vernacular English of the African American communities of Florida — the Black Southern dialect that Hurston heard growing up and documented as an anthropologist — and the result is one of the most rhythmically beautiful prose styles in American fiction. Hurston told the story of a woman finding her voice and refused to make that story primarily about racial oppression; this was controversial in 1937 and was her genius.
Dust Tracks on a Road (1942)
Hurston’s autobiography — a memoir of her childhood in the all-Black town of Eatonville, Florida (her father was its mayor), her years of poverty and determination, her anthropological training under Franz Boas at Columbia, her fieldwork collecting folklore in the South and the Caribbean, and her literary career. The autobiography is characteristically oblique about some aspects of her life (she was not fully honest about her personal relationships or her political views, which were more conservative than her Harlem Renaissance contemporaries expected) but enormously vivid about her childhood and her intellectual development. Essential for understanding how Hurston’s life shaped her work.
Mules and Men (1935)
Hurston’s most important non-fiction work — a collection of African American folklore gathered during her anthropological fieldwork in Florida and Louisiana. The collection contains folk tales, ‘lies’ (competitive tall-tale telling), and detailed accounts of hoodoo practice, all presented with Hurston’s insider knowledge: she was from these communities, not an academic outsider studying them, and her account of the culture is consequently both more accurate and more sympathetic than any outside observer could have produced. The folk tales directly shaped her fictional vernacular style; reading Mules and Men deepens the experience of Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Reading Zora Neale Hurston
Hurston’s particular genius is her ear — her ability to render the rhythms and idioms of Black Southern speech in prose that is simultaneously linguistically accurate and deeply literary. Her vernacular style is not a concession to regional colour but the primary vehicle of her meaning; the music of Black Southern speech is inseparable from what her characters think and feel and want. Begin with Their Eyes Were Watching God: it is her masterpiece and the most complete demonstration of her gifts. Read Dust Tracks on a Road to understand the life from which the work came. Read Mules and Men to understand the culture from which both life and work emerged.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where should I start with Zora Neale Hurston?
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) is both the most widely read and the essential starting point — a novel about Janie Crawford's three marriages and her search for selfhood and love, written in the vernacular English of the African American communities of Florida that Hurston documented in her anthropological work. It is one of the most celebrated American novels of the twentieth century and a foundational text of African American women's literature. Dust Tracks on a Road is the best alternative for readers who want Hurston's autobiography before her fiction.
What is Their Eyes Were Watching God about?
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) follows Janie Crawford from her girlhood in Florida through three marriages: the first arranged by her grandmother for security, the second to Joe Starks, an ambitious man who becomes mayor of an all-Black town but silences Janie in the process, and the third to Tea Cake Woods, a younger, free-spirited man with whom Janie finally experiences genuine love and selfhood. The novel is narrated in Hurston's rich vernacular style — Black Southern dialect rendered with the precision and musicality of a trained anthropologist — and is one of the most important African American novels ever written.
Why was Zora Neale Hurston forgotten and then rediscovered?
Hurston was a major figure of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 30s, but she died in poverty and obscurity in 1960, her books out of print. Richard Wright famously attacked Their Eyes Were Watching God for its lack of social protest and its celebration of Black Southern folk culture rather than engagement with racism. It was Alice Walker who rescued Hurston from obscurity in the 1970s — finding her unmarked grave, writing a celebrated essay about her work, and advocating for the reissue of her novels. Since Walker's essay, Hurston has been recognized as one of the central figures in African American literary history.
What is Mules and Men about?
Mules and Men (1935) is Hurston's collection of African American folklore from the rural communities of Florida and Louisiana, gathered during her fieldwork as an anthropologist under Franz Boas at Columbia. The book contains folk tales, 'lies' (tall tales), and accounts of hoodoo (African American folk magic practices), presented with Hurston's characteristic warmth and insider knowledge of the communities she documented. It is one of the most important collections of African American oral culture in existence, and it shows how Hurston's anthropological work directly shaped the vernacular style of her fiction.
