Race, Class and Identity in Zora Neal Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time (1963)
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Date
2019
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
UNIVERSITE MOULOUD MAMMERI TIZI-OUZOU
Abstract
The following research paper is devoted to the study of race, class division and the quest for
identity in Zora Neal Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and James
Baldwin’s collection of essays The Fire Next Time (1963). To reach our aim, we will make
use of Kimberly Crenshaw’s theory of feminism as developed in her work Demerginalizin the
Intersection of Race and Sex: a Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine,
Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics (1989). By drawing from the above theory some
analytical concepts such as race, class struggle and the quest for identity, the research has
shown that both authors share the same current concerns of Afro-American traditions and
condition in white racist America as they were both influenced by the Harlem Renaissance
ideals and it is their common heritage which has drawn them to devote their works to black
culture, class struggle and the quest for identity. Thus, as a whole, the Works contains the
introduction where we present the issues that surround the two mentioned Works relaying on
the theory of Kimberly Crenshaw’s, we outline our research into results three chapters. The
first one is devoted to the study of race, while the second deals with the class division and
social conflicts between whites and black. The last chapter studies how Baldwin and Hurston
present their main characters’ quest for a distinctive self-identity; we end up with conclusion
summarizing the whole research
Description
30cm.; 58p.+cd
Keywords
Citation
Littérature et Approche Interdisciplinaire