ESSAY ASSIGNMENT
Length: 1500 words.
In "Between Laughter and Tears," a review about Their Eyes Were Watching God, Richard Wright (author of Black Boy and Native Son)writes of Zora Neale Hurston:
Miss Hurston can write, but her prose is cloaked in that facile sensuality that has dogged Negro expression since the days of Phillis Wheatley. Her dialogue manages to catch the psychological movements of the Negro folk-mind in their pure simplicity, but that's as far as it goes. Miss Hurston voluntarily continues in her novel the tradition which was forced upon the Negro in the theatre, that is, the minstrel technique that makes the "white folks" laugh. Her characters eat and laugh and cry and work and kill; they swing like a pendulum eternally in that safe and narrow orbit in which America likes to see the Negro live: between laughter and tears. . . The sensory sweep of her novel carries no theme, no message, no thought. In the main, her novel is not addressed to the Negro, but to a white audience whose chauvinistic tastes she knows how to satisfy. She exploits that phase of Negro life which is "quaint," the phase which evokes a piteous smile on the lips of the "superior" race.
Richard Wright's criticism reminds us that African American writers of the Harlem Renaissance often created pieces that were supported or consumed by white audiences. Is he accurate in his assessment of Hurston? How does Hurston handle the complications of the writer-audience relationship? In what ways does she live up to the expectations of a predominantly white audience, as understood by Wright? How does Hurston challenge these expectations? Use examples from the novel as well as secondary sources to support your argument.
Format your assignment according to the following formatting requirements:
o The answer should be typed, using Times New Roman font (size 12), double spaced, with one-inch margins on all sides.
o The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
o Also include a reference page. The Citations and references must follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.