
Great American Novel Episode 6: Watching the Horizon in THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD
10 snips
Aug 20, 2021 AI Snips
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Episode notes
Hurston's 'Lost Decade' And Age Fraud
- Hurston shaved a decade off her age to enter high school in Baltimore and later college.
- She worked menial jobs during a largely undocumented 'lost decade' before publishing novels.
Two Strands In Black Literary Politics
- Late-19th to mid-20th-century Black literature split between protest-driven and aesthetic-focused approaches.
- Hurston's novel exemplifies the aesthetic, inward-focused approach and clashed with protest writers like Richard Wright.
Narration Versus Dialect Dynamic
- Hurston's prose alternates between lyrical omniscient narration and phonetic dialect dialogue.
- The narration often carries the book's poetic power while the dialect aims to preserve authentic speech.
