Vodou Imagery, African American Tradition, and Cultural Transformation in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God

Abstract

Their Eyes Were Watching God in 1937 while in Haiti collecting folklore on Vodou.1 A year later, she published Tell My Horse, which documents the findings from that expedition.While the history of these publications suggests that, for Hurston, folklore and fiction converge in Haiti, few critics have adequately explored that juncture.Most acknowledge Hurston's interest in Haitian Vodou, but their analyses of the impact of this belief system on her work frequently do not extend beyond perfunctory glosses.A notable exception is Ellease Southerland's essay, "The Influence of Voodoo on the Fiction of Zora Neale Hurston," published in the 1979 collection, Sturdy Black Bridges.Southerland's article makes an important contribution to readings of Hurston's integration of folklore and fiction.The essay discusses the appearance and significance of various "voodoo" signs, symbols and rituals in Hurston's fiction; and more specific to this paper, it identifies the use of Vodou symbolism in Their Eyes Were Watching God very early in the history of the novel's criticism.But Southerland does not cite her sources for certain voodoo rituals, or for the significance of various numbers and colors which appear repeatedly in Hurston's fiction.Her analysis therefore seems based on anecdotal evidence and it ignores the cultural distinctions amongst Haitian, Louisiana and other kinds of voodoo and hoodoo.These aspects of the essay contribute to the failure, or refusal, of succeeding generations of literary critics to further examine the cultural influences that Southerland found in Their Eyes Were Watching God.Some-although certainly not all-critics have categorized Hurston's study and incorporation of Vodou as an intriguing curiosity, perhaps considering it to fall within the purview of anthropology and not literature.Reading the novel within such narrow parameters, however, has resulted in a general inability on the part of Hurston's readers to identify the extent to which her use of Vodou ethnography in her literature enables her exploration of female empowerment and African-American cultural identity.In this paper, I focus specifically on Hurston's use of Haitian Vodou imagery in Their Eyes Were Watching God, and I argue that the folklore enables her confrontation of various kinds of social and personal transformation.Her use of Vodou imagery enables her to analyze the relationship among migration, culture and identity that lies

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