“Folklore,” she wrote, “is the arts of the people before they find out that there is any such thing as art.” Their Eyes Were Watching God also had an anthropological component: It borrowed heavily from Hurston’s upbringing in Eatonville, Florida, and achieved a masterful articulation of dialect and verisimilitude. In the 1930s, Hurston traveled across the Deep South and throughout the Caribbean in order to capture black folk heritage and traditions and preserve them faithfully for posterity.
Though most readers will recognize Hurston as the bluestocking Harlem Renaissance novelist-doyenne of the self-styled “niggerati,” who penned one of literature’s most empowered female protagonists (Janie Crawford, the idealistic heroine of Their Eyes Were Watching God )-she was also an accomplished ethnographer.
Fearing that he will stray too far from the topic at hand, she interjects, “But Kossula, I want to hear about you.” His response informs the tone of the story that follows: “He gave me a look full of scornful pity and asked, ‘Where is de house where de mouse is de leader? In de Affica soil I cain tellee you ’bout de son before I tellee you ’bout de father.’” This reluctance to intrude was also one reason that Hurston struggled to publish Kossula’s story in the 1930s every interested publisher balked at the use of dialect throughout the book. At the start of Barracoon, there is a brief moment of tension when Hurston is given a mild dressing-down after interrupting Kossula as he recounts a story about his grandfather.
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