On Political Consciousness in Their Eyes Were Watching God from the Perspective of Afrocentricity

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-551-5_142How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Their Eyes Were Watching God; Slave Narrative; Black English Vernacular; Afrocentrism

Abstract

Their Eyes Were Watching God, the magnum opus of African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston, is a foundational text of Afrocentric literature. This paper argues that through the employment of and the adaptation of the slave narrative form and Black English Vernacular, Hurston not only vividly portrays the protagonist Janie Crawford’s quest for selfhood but also articulates a profound political consciousness. This consciousness simultaneously encompasses Black feminist identity and the affirmation of a distinct Black cultural identity, challenging the overlapping oppressions of race, gender, and class.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Qianzi Zhao
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/03/26
TI  - On Political Consciousness in Their Eyes Were Watching God from the Perspective of Afrocentricity
BT  - Proceeding of 2025 8th International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1307
EP  - 1313
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-551-5_142
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-551-5_142
ID  - Zhao2026
ER  -