"Sweat": Written by Zora Neale Hurston

by Zora Neale Hurston, Cheryl A. Wall (Editor)

Overview

Now frequently anthologized, Zora Neale Hurston's short story "Sweat" was first published in Firell, a legendary literary magazine of the Harlem Renaissance, whose sole issue appeared in November 1926. Among contributions by Gwendolyn Bennett, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Wallace Thurman, "Sweat" stood out both for its artistic accomplishment and its exploration of rural Southern black life. In "Sweat" Hurston claimed the voice that animates her mature fiction, notably the 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God; the themes of marital conflict and the development of spiritual consciousness were introduced as well. "Sweat" exemplifies Hurston's lifelong concern with women's relation to language and the literary possibilities of black vernacular.

This casebook for the story includes an introduction by the editor, a chronology of the author's life, the authoritative text of "Sweat," and a second story, "The Gilded Six-Bits." Published in 1932, this second story was written after Hurston had spent years conducting fieldwork in the Southern United States. The volume also includes Hurston's groundbreaking 1934 essay, "Characteristics of Negro Expression," and excerpts from her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road. An article by folklorist Roger Abrahams provides additional cultural contexts for the story, as do selected blues and spirituals. Critical commentary comes from Alice Walker, who led the recovery of Hurston's work in the 1970s, Robert Hemenway, Henry Louis Gates, Gayl Jones, John Lowe, Kathryn Seidel, and Mary Helen Washington.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813523163
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	03/01/1997
Series:	Women Writers: Texts and Contexts
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	246
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	17 - 18 Years

About the Author

Cheryl Wall is an associate professor of English at Rutgers University. She is the editor of Changing Our Own Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory, and Writing by Black Women (Rutgers University Press) and the author of Women of Letters of the Harlem Renaissance.

Date of Birth:

January 7, 1891

Date of Death:

January 28, 1960

Place of Birth:

Eatonville, Florida

Place of Death:

Fort Pierce, Florida

Education:

B.A., Barnard College, 1928 (the school's first black graduate). Went on to study anthropology at Columbia University.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chronology
"Sweat"
Background to the Story
    Research
    Characteristics of Negro Expressions
    Negotiating Respect: Patterns of Presentation among Black Women
    A Selection of Blues and Spirituals
    Genesis 1-3
    Zora Neale Hurston and the Speakerly Text
    The Gilded Six-Bits
Critical Essays
    From Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography
    Breaking out of the Conventions of Dialect
    The Artist in the Kitchen: The Economies of Creativity in Hurston's "Sweat"
    From Jump at the Sun: Zora Neale Hurston's Cosmic Comedy
    "I Love the Way Janie Crawford Left her Husbands": Zora Neale Hurston's Emergent Female Hero
    Looking for Zara
    Selected Bibliography
    Permissions