Hitting A Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Race and Gender in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston

Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick examines the ways Zora Neale Hurston circumvented the constraints of the white publishing world and a predominantly white readership to critique white culture and its effects on the black community. A number of critics have concluded that Hurston simply capitulated to external demands, writing stories white people wanted to hear. Susan Edwards Meisenhelder, however, argues that Hurston’s response to her situation is much more sophisticated than h...