The “Dialect” of Black Literature
For this second blog post, I decided that I would take up the topic of Zora Neale Hurston’s Essay “Characteristics of the Negro Expression”, and how a few of the literary works that we’ve studied from the Harlem Renaissance connect to her study. In her essay Zora Neale Hurston talks about the several different aspects that are apparent in Black art and writing during her time and before. Examples of such are Drama, the “Will to Adorn”, the creation of the Metaphor and Simile, and so on. However, in order to make sure this blog post doesn’t get too long, I’ve decided to focus on the characteristic of Dialect. For dialect, Hurston first talks about the stereotype of this characteristic, saying that it usually described as one “full of ‘ams’ and ‘Ises’” by some writers. She then goes on to talk about in proper detail the phonetics of African American speech, describing things such as the actual way African Americans at the time pronounced “I”. She said it sounded more...