Merry Max's Explorations in African American Literature

While Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) wrote during the peak of the Harlem Renaissance, her research provided commentary on the movement itself.           In her analysis of African American cultural art forms, Zora Neale Hurston uses the terms “drama” and “will to adorn” distinctly as an all-encompassing attribute of African American expression. These founding principles of expression find themselves deeply immersed in Harlem Renaissance poetry, and are characteristically used to differentiate the works as uniquely African American at this time. However, much of the internal conflict that afflicted Harlem Renaissance artists is confused within these foundation principles. The merging of Eurocentric ideas, such as within Countee Cullen’s “Colored Blues Singer”, was a pivotal conflict point to African Americans’ situation within the world’s art, questioning whether blending within European tradition can be achieved without losing African American identity. Cul...