AAIHS Article: Zora Neale Hurston’s Radical Black Love

AAIHS Article: Zora Neale Hurston’s Radical Black Love
AAIHS Article: Zora Neale Hurston’s Radical Black Love

In this new article from the African American Intellectual History Society, Ayesha Hardison, Associate Professor of English and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Kansas, and Randal Maurice Jelks, Professor of American Studies and African and African American Studies at the University of Kansas, discuss the impact of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and the importance of love in black communities.

Hurston’s bold assertion is a reminder in the age of #BlackLivesMatter and the era of regressive white nationalist politics that love still matters in black communities–whether it is hot romantic love, queer love, family love, or self-love. Their Eyes Were Watching God reminds us that we must think about the ethics of our love, too. Black love is a spiritual and political thing that we must nurture, preserve, and share with all members of our communities.

The authors are the planners of Black Love: A Symposium The 80th Anniversary of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God which will be held at the University of Kansas on September 14-16, 2017.

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