INSANITIES AND SELF DESTRUCTION OF THE POST EMANCIPATED BLACKS IN AMERICA: A CRITICAL READING THROUGH THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD, BY ZORA NEALE HURSTON

Abstract

Blacks’ evolution in America has been the result of a long chain of sacrifices. Indeed, after centuries of slavery, a new life was proposed to those descends of African’ ancestry who then took great part in the building of the New World. The advent of emancipation, for sure was seen as an opportunity to change their life from submissive domination into auto-improvement. Thus, anyone from the outside of the Blacks’ environment, or from America in short, would have anticipated on a community of Blacks, entirely conscious of the long and hard way back, and totally willing to found a nation deprived of all kind of ill winds, ill deeds, and reprehensible attitudes. The ‘New Negro’, as he became a now person, was supposed to behave like a perfect man, an example of integrity, an open minded person. Unfortunately, Black Americans’ history is full of facts that raised controversial opinions among Blacks themselves; the emancipated Black has shown to become a current and prospective danger to his fellow Blacks. However, until the immediate post Harlem Renaissance period, it hardly conceivable to have some black writer expose this bad condition created by the Black to himself and to his fellow men. Such was the main characteristic of the 1920-1940 Harlem Renaissance, which rejected Zora Neale Hurston, together with her novel, Their Eyes Where Watching God, which dared present the Black American’s negative side.