Diasporic Survival in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. African cultural heritage in the United States

Essay from the year 2012 in the subject American Studies - Literature language: English abstract: In this paper Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is examined to demonstrate how storytelling and the blues as aspects of diasporic survival function in her fiction which depicts how African cultural heritage operates in the United States. She articulates the need for her black folks throughout diaspora to confront racism by employing their African cultural heritage as a vehicle for empowerment. Janie Hurston's protagonist finds that when she embraces her African heritage not only does she gain great awareness of her selfhood better as African American but she also discovers that her Africanity and her identity are intertwined.