Hurston is widely considered one of the foremost writers of the Harlem Renaissance, a period of great achievement in African American art and literature during the 1920s and 1930s. Her fiction, which depicts relationships among black residents in her native southern Florida, was largely unconcerned with racial injustices. While not well known during her lifetime, Hurston's works have undergone a substantial critical reevaluation, particularly since the advent of the black protest novel and the elevation in literary status of authors Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin during the post-World War II era. Hurston's present reputation and popularity are evidenced by the reprinting of several of her works in the late 1980s, including Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). This book has been read as a feminist manifesto for its unconventional female protagonist, Janie Crawford, who is considered by many as a representation of the author herself. Hurston's novel...