Reclaiming Identity and Voice: A Postcolonial Feminist Reading of African American Womanhood in Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God”

Mohammed Al Awdi

Mohammed Al Awdi Hunan Normal University

Keywords: Postcolonial criticism, African American womanhood, identity, Zora Neale Hurston, cultural heritage, voice and autonomy

Abstract

This paper critically examines Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God through the theoretical framework of postcolonial criticism to investigate the construction of African American womanhood. By analyzing the protagonist Janie Crawford’s evolving journey toward self-identity, autonomy, and narrative agency, the study elucidates how Hurston reclaims and reconstructs African American female identity amidst intersecting structures of racial and gender oppression. Situated within the historical context of the Harlem Renaissance, this research foreground’s key themes including resistance to hegemonic power, gender dynamics within African American communities, and the affirmation of cultural heritage. Employing both postcolonial and feminist lenses, Hurston’s narrative emerges as a critical medium challenging dominant oppressive ideology and asserting the cultural selfhood of black women. The novel’s portrayal of Janie’s complex subjectivity highlights the interrelation of race, gender, and history, thereby offering a nuanced contribution to the discourse on postcolonial literature and African American cultural identity. This study further enriches scholarly understanding of black women’s representation and empowerment in literary tradition and social praxis.

References

Barry, P. (2002). Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester University Press.

Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The Location of Culture. Routledge.

Bernard, P. S. (2007). The cognitive construction of the self in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. Comparative Literature and Culture, 9(2). https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.1347

Carby, H. (1987). Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist. Oxford University Press.

Clarke, D. (2001). “The Porch Couldn’t Talk for Looking”: Voice and Vision in Their Eyes Were Watching God. African American Review, 35(4), 599–613.

Gates, H. L. Jr. (1984). Black Literature and Literary Theory. Routledge.

Gates, H. L. Jr. (1985). “Race,” Writing and Difference. University of Chicago Press.

Hall, S. (1990). Cultural identity and diaspora. In J. Rutherford (Ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (pp. 222–237). Lawrence & Wishart.

Hooks, b. (2015). Talking back. In Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (pp. 5–9). Taylor & Francis.

Hooks, b. (2015). On self-recovery. In Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (pp. 28–34). Taylor & Francis.

Hurston, Z. N. (1937). Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics (2006 edition).

Hutcheon, L. (1989). The Politics of Postmodernism. Routledge.

Irigaray, L. (1985). Women on the market. In This Sex Which Is Not One (C. Porter & C. Burke, Trans., pp. 170–191). Cornell University Press.

Miller, S. E. (2000). Some other way to try: From defiance to creative submission in Their Eyes Were Watching God. The Southern Literary Journal, 33(1), 74–96.

Moi, T. (1985). Sexual/Textual Politics. Routledge.

Morrison, T. (1984). Rootedness: The ancestor as foundation. In M. Evans (Ed.), Black Women Writers (1950–1980): A Critical Evaluation (pp. 339–345). Doubleday.

Morrison, T. (1992). Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Harvard University Press.

Racine, M. J. (1993). Voice and interiority in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. African American Review, 28(2), 283–292.

Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon Books.

Silber, K. (2003). An African-American woman’s journey of self-discovery in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. In J. Fisher & E. Silber (Eds.), Women in Literature (pp. 280–282). Greenwood Press.