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Zora Neale Hurston’s Craft and a Griot’s Refusal to Conform

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Performing Autobiography

Abstract

This chapter discusses the ways that Hurston challenged the conventions of several forms. While she defied expectation through narrative voice in her fiction and nonfiction, she also defied expectation in writing her autobiography, Dust Tracks on the Road. Initially ignored because of its “lackluster” feel compared to her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, a closer look at Hurston's memoir, in light of her tendency to experiment and not conform to genre convention, reveals a deeply layered text that challenges what it means to write a life. The chapter also discusses how Hurston's autobiographical text is not only experimental but also performative. Compared to the ways she challenged the anthropological community, her performative auto/biography suggests that Hurston’s commitment to writing Black language and culture was a refusal to both white and Black readers’ expectations of the Black esthetic of the Harlem Renaissance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. English, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

    Katrina M. Powell

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  1. Katrina M. Powell
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Correspondence to Katrina M. Powell .

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Powell, K.M. (2021). Zora Neale Hurston’s Craft and a Griot’s Refusal to Conform. In: Performing Autobiography. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64598-4_3

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