This content is from Wikipedia. We do not consider this content professional or citable. Please use your discretion when relying on it. GradeSaver also offers a professionally written study guide by one of our staff editors.

Criticism

While today Hurston's book is present on many reading lists for African American literature programs in the United States, the book was not universally praised by Hurston's peers, with particular criticism leveled at her use of phonetic spellings of the dialect spoken by blacks of African and Caribbean descent in the South of the early 20th century (for example, "tuh" instead of "to" and "Ah" instead of "I"). Richard Wright called Their Eyes Were Watching God a "minstrel-show turn that makes the white folks laugh" and said it showed "no desire whatever to move in the direction of serious fiction."^[3] Ralph Ellison said the book contained a "blight of calculated burlesque."^[4] Many other prominent authors that were a part of the Harlem Renaissance were upset that Hurston exposed divisions between light skinned African Americans and those that had darker skin,^{[citation needed]} as seen in Mrs. Turner, as well as the more subtle division between black men and women. This concern is quickly dispelled, however, as the character is largely an adversary of the rest in the book.