Introduction & Overview of Sweat by Zora Neale Hurston

Sweat Introduction

In 1926, a group of writers from the younger generation of the "New Negro" movement inNew York City, including Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, decided to organize the quarterly magazine Fire!! Frustrated by the responsibilities thrust on them by Alain Locke and other leaders of the Harlem Renaissance, these writers wanted to express their own ideas without the artistic constraints of a political agenda. And, although they only managed to publish one issue because of a host of complications, the magazine left behind one of the most lasting legacies of the radical younger generation of black writers, still considered Hurston's best fiction of the period: a short story titled "Sweat."

Now available in the complete collection of Hurston's stories published by HarperCollins (1995), "Sweat" focuses on the turning point in the life of Delia Jones, a washerwoman from Hurston's hometown ofEatonville, Florida. Beginning with an outburst against her...
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