Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker: Intertextualities

Contemporary black feminist critics have affirmed that Zora Neale Hurston is the matriarch of today's black women writers. They have also identified her rich legacy to these writers: an aesthetics of folklore, an aesthetics of black womanhood and an aesthetics of language. Moreover, not unlike Walker herself, some of these critics have examined the "relationship" or "kinship" between Hurston and Walker confirming that Hurston is indeed Walker's model and literary mother. In this study I examine selected works of each author in an attempt to show how Hurston's texts are reflected in those of Walker.;Hurston's literary influence on Walker is extensive. Walker makes folktales and other folkloric items important in her fiction as did Hurston for much the same purpose, to acquaint blacks with their ancestors and their rich cultural heritage of oral lore. While Walker's Georgia sharecroppers lack the self-esteem, pride, dignity and sense of community that Hurston's Southerners in the all-black town of Eatonville, Florida, display, it is through a knowledge of their illustrious ancestors, however, that Walker changes her depraved characters for the better and their lives become meaningful.;Similar to Hurston, Walker also preserves portraits of blacks' ancestors in her fiction, develops black female protagonists who insist on and define themselves and employs dialect to define her characters as well as exquisite metaphorical language to describe both characters and scenes.;Although Walker does not celebrate black culture in her writings throughout her career as did Hurston, in her early writings through The Color Purple (1982), she adheres to and extends Hurston's traditions.