Zora Neale Hurston and the Legacy of Black Feminism

The first extended examination into the structure of influence of Zora Neale Hurston''s work on major black women writers, an idea that has been widely accepted, this book explores Hurston''s impact on such authors as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, bell hooks, Rita Dove, and Tracy K. Smith, Ntozake Shange and Lorraine Hansberry. Focusing specifically on the concept of desire as a liberatory idiom and as the highest expression of self-consciousness and personhood, Chielozona Eze delves into the ethical and social assumptions of Hurston''s aesthetics and feminist visions and their manifestations in the works of the black women writers who came after her. Through philosophical conceptions of desire, and zoning in on Hurston''s Their Eyes were Watching God and its protagonist Janie Crawford, Eze unlocks crucial conceptual and analytic trajectories regarding debates on freedom, personhood and Black feminism, and how such rich interiority appears in key works by Black women. Surveying fiction including The Bluest Eye , Sula , and Song of Solomon , plays and poetry collections such as A Raisin in the Sun, For the Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf , The Yellow House on the Corner , Thomas and Beulah and finally, Stacy Abram''s memoir Lead from the Outside , this book is a remarkable intervention with important implications for our times.

Product details

• Authors: Chielozona Eze
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 08.01.2026
• EAN: 9781350405677
• ISBN: 978-1-350-40567-7
• No. of pages: 256
• Series: Bloomsbury Studies in Global Women’s Writing
• Subjects: LITERARY CRITICISM / Women Authors, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, Feminism & feminist theory, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Feminism and feminist theory, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, Black & Asian Studies, Relating to Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) peoples, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / African American & Black