Zora Neale Hurston\u27s Dust Tracks On a Road : Black autobiography in a different voice

Zora Neal Hurston\u27s autobiography, Dust Tracks On a Road has been denounced as shallow, dishonest, and disingenuous. Described as enigmatic and idiosyncratic, it is considered unrepresentational of Black life and uncharacteristic of Afro-American literature. The largely negative criticism argues that Dust Tracks disappoints the militant expectations of the Afro-American autobiographical tradition. This view of the autobiography has resulted in the work\u27s exclusion from the Afro-American literary mainstream. However, a close reading of the text in terms of its narrative strategies and persona links the work to the Afro-American literary continuum but argues that a distinct woman\u27s voice must be heard in order to understand how the female experience may be different from the dominant male tradition but equally authentic. Chapter one introduces the work. Chapter two, focusing on the problem of audience, examines the relationship between the narrator and her readers. Chapter three traces the teleology of the author\u27s selfhood. Chapter four shows how Dust Tracks draws on the Afro-American folk sermon form as a narrative and linguistic strategy which likens the autobiographical voice with that of the Afro-American folk preacher. Chapter five describes how folklore motifs influence stylistic, thematic, and strategic aspects of the narrative. Chapter six considers how the Afro-American literary tradition has privileged men\u27s voices, perspectives, and visions to the exclusion of women\u27s. It argues that Dust Tracks On a Road is part of a varied Black literary tradition which must be recognized in a revised definition of Black autobiography