Cultural Tradition

Hurston directly engages with her own cultural traditions through the very act of storytelling, especially through the inclusion of folkloric content. The art of storytelling inherent in the African American oral tradition is recorded directly from the mouth of the storyteller in the case of Part XIV of “The Eatonville Anthology.” The use of idiom works to mimic hearing the story despite reading it. The collapse of folklore and fiction—blending fiction with widely known folkloric characters and plots—indicates that the collection of short stories, directly engaging with folklore or not, contribute to this sense of sharing truth through fiction. On a traditional level, these stories aim to glean lessons and truth through an artistic representation of seemingly commonplace occurrences.

This anthology indicates that while modernization threatened the cultural traditions of the past, they persevered. The cultural identity of these characters is a direct...