Journal Article

Making A Way Out of No Way: Hurston's Indigenous Inspirations

Milne, Leah

2024

Overview

The joke also exposes a pattern in Hurston's literary and ethnographic work of offering contrasts and comparisons between Black and Indigenous people, one that I argue shows the influences that Native Americans-particularly their mode of relative separation and disengagement from white culture, had on Hurston's perspectives on Black identity, which themselves reflected a form of modernist southern Black consciousness fostered outside of Harlem. In a 1955 letter to Orlando Sentineľs editor, Hurston weighed in on the 1954 Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education decision deeming school segregation unconstitutional: [...]this shift also reveals how Hurston uses Indigeneity as a framework against which she shaped her opinions on and relationship to Black identity. With the removal of this immediate white presence, actions gain more discernment. [...]I track Hurston s rhetorical positioning to Indigeneity by examining work leading up to this announced acceptance of the Indian position-with a brief exploration of her early years at Barnard, her short story \"Magnolia Flower,\" her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, and finally a focus on Hurston 's latter years, including a research trip to Honduras.

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press,University of North Carolina Press
• Subject: American Indians / Anthropologists / Attitudes / Black people / Criticism and interpretation / Folklore / Hurston, Zora Neale / Hurston, Zora Neale (1891-1960) / Indigenous peoples / Native North Americans / Novels / Oppression / Segregation / Short stories / Social science research