An Analysis of Zora Heale Hurston's Characteristics of Negro Expression

<P>A critical analysis of African-American novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston' 1934 essay <EM>Characteristics of Negro Expression: </EM>A crushing evaluation of the many racial prejudices of 1930s America, including a common presumption that African American art was unoriginal – merely poorly copying white culture. </P><P>Hurston’s approach and premises may seem in many ways dated to modern readers, but the essay still shows an incisive mind carefully evaluating arguments and cutting them down to size. African-American art of the time did not – Hurston influentially argued – play by the same rules as white art, so it could not meaningfully be discussed by ‘white’ notions of aesthetic value. </P><P>Where white European tradition views art as something fixed, Hurston saw African-American art works as a distinctive form of mimicry, reshaping and altering the original object until it became something new and novel. In this way, she contended, African-American creative expression is a process that generates its own form of originality – turning borrowed material into something original and unique. By carefully evaluating the relevance of previous arguments, Hurston showed African American artistic expression in an entirely new light.</P>