“Ah ain’t never seen mah papa. And Ah didn’t know ‘im if Ah did. Mah mama neither. She was gone from round dere long before Ah wuz big enough tuh know. Mah grandma raised me. Mah grandma and de white folks she worked wid.” (p.8)

Zora Neale Hurston’s use of regional, African-American dialect in Their Eyes Were Watching God was not without controversy. While some readers believe she captures the authentic voice of the people of Eatonville (where she lived and eventually returned to work as an anthropologist), others, including some intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance, found her choice problematic. The famous African-American novelist Richard Wright stated in his 1937 review of the novel that “Miss Hurston voluntarily continues in her novel the tradition which was forced upon the Negro in the theatre, that is, the minstrel technique that makes the ‘white folks’ laugh.”

Have a listen to this 1941 audio recording of Isom Mosely, a man who was formerly enslaved in Gee’s Bend, Alabama, and then take ten minutes to try to set down part Mr. Mosely’s story in writing. Now read this transcript of Mr. Mosely’s story. Can the words alone, rendered as they are, communicates a sense of who he was and the life he lead on the plantation? Look back and your own transcript and see what else you might integrate - perhaps something other than words - to try to faithfully represent his testimony…