Zora Neale Hurston is today recognized as a major contributor to the Harlem Renaissance literature of the 1920s and American modernist literature. Hurston's most important works, published in the 1930s, emerge from her interest in African American oral and vernacular culture, represented in her most studied publications Mules and Men (1935) and Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). Hurston's interest in preserving the culture of the black South remains among her most valuable contributions.

This volume-one of six DLB volumes discussing African-American writers-represents a peak period in African-American literary activity sometimes called the Harlem Renaissance or New Negro era, and lasting from about 1915 to the early '30s. During this time, African-American artists and writers from cities all around the U.S. flocked to Harlem and began a decade of striving to change popular perceptions of their people. As Trudier Harris describes the writers of this period in the volume's foreword: 'They sought...to change racist attitudes but to preserve African heritage, to diminish isolation between races but to nurture distinctive racial characteristics.' 34 entries include: Arna Bontemps, Countee Cullen, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Georgia Douglas Johnson, ClaudeMcKay, George Samuel Schuyler, Jean Toomer and Walter Francis White.

Their Eyes Were Watching God is a key text in African American literature. Its author Zora Neale Hurston has become an iconic figure for her literary works and for her invaluable contribution to documenting elements of black folk culture in the rural south and in the Caribbean. This introductory book designed for students explores Hurston's artistic achievements and her unique character: her staunch individualism, her penchant for drama, her sometimes controversial politics, her philosophical influences and her views on gender relations. Lovalerie King explores Hurston's life and analyses her major works and short stories. Historical, social, political, and cultural contexts for Hurston's life and work, including her key role in the development of the Harlem Renaissance, are set out. The book concludes with an overview of the reception of Hurston's work, both in her lifetime and up to the present, as well as suggestions for further reading.