Literary Conventions

 

Zora Neale Hurston

Imagery

Invoking Ancesters

Point of View

Plot

Style

 

About Zora Neale Hurston

Language

Zora on Marriage

Photographs

"Shotgun " by John Biggers ;

"Georgia landscape" by Hale Woodruff

 

Selection List:

Works Examined:

Their Eyes Were Watching God

by Zora Neale Hurston

Sula

by Toni Morrison

Meridian

by Alice Walker

 

Literary Conventions

 

Questions and Exercises

 

 

 

 

Invoking the Ancesters

 

from Delores S. Williams, "Sources of Black Female Spirituality: The Ways of the Old Folks and Women Writers," My Soul Is a Witness. 187-91.

 

What is the nature of the power that gives black women the strength to survive? Spiritual power. Where does the spiritual power come from?

The "old black folks" preach that the spiritual power comes

from GodóGod alone when one experiences the "standing-alone-feeling."from community: ""the joy of the social (as well as the religious) gathering of the

  • community in the suppers, basket meetings, Sunday school picnics, and in festivals celebrating the accomplishments of community members"(188).The black church was the center of this community.
  • from family. "God, you are my father, my mother, my sister, and my brother." They, especially the female members of the family introduced the child to the "African-American prayer tradition" (188). They taught the children "scripture," sometimes extra-Biblical scripture"189), which taught for one thing, "to cast up the highway; roll down the stones; set up a standard for the people" (188).

 

Goboldte, My Soul Is a Witness, about the ancestors and the pouring of libations. G. quotes the Imani Church bulletin: "This is a sign of communion, fellowship, and commemoration. It unites past, present, and future. It also prepares us for the Invocation of the saints."

". . .As we call upon the holy people of heaven and all of our ancestors to be present with us, we again show the unity of that which was, that which is, and that which is to come. It is expressive of the belief in African and African American spirituality that those who have gone before us are still present with us." (Goboldte 245)

 

The Imani Temple mass includes (involves the syncretism of) both Roman Catholic sacraments and African rituals. Includes prostration of the priest, pouring of libations, invocations of the saints and ancestors, African instruments, African American spiritual and gospel songs, and the Eucharist (Goboldte 244)

 

"When we perform rituals as our ancestors did, we become our ancestors did, we become our ancestors, and so transcend the boundaries of ordinary space and time, and the limitations of separation that they impose. When we call the spirits and they enter our bodies we symbolize in our being the joining of, and therefore communication between, two spheres of the universe: "heaven" and the "earth."

--Dona Marimba Richards, Let the Circle Be Unbroken, in Gayles 294

 

 

Program content by Violet Bryan,Ph.D. and Robin Vander

Xavier University of Louisiana