Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston: The Common Bond (Contributions in Afro-American and African Studies)

About this book

While Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston are often linked together few scholars have looked critically and systematically at what the two actually have in common. This study documents the many ways that Hurston has influenced Walker and demonstrates how Walker by taking the best of Hurston and making it live in striking new ways has accorded Hurston a literary immortality apart from that which Hurston earned in her own right. In so doing Walker has also laid a solid foundation for her own literary reputation. Eleven African-American scholars have contributed their appraisals of this common bond concentrating on parallels between Hurstons Their Eyes Were Watching God and Walkers The Color Purple; and Walkers tribute to Hurston Zora Neale Hurston: A Cautionary Tale and a Partisan View is reprinted.