The+Place+of+Their+Eyes+Were+Watching+God+in+the+Harlem+Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance started to flourish in the 1920s and ‘30s. This time was an awakening of black culture in America, when African-American artists, writers, and musicians started to take great pride in their heritage. These people would base much of their art on the situations and feelings of being black and American at that time in history. Their creations tended to glorify the experience of African Americans, embracing the speech and lifestyle of their personal culture. Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God is very much a product of the Harlem Renaissance. It portrays the situation of poor Southern blacks without an attitude of condescension, instead showing them as a distinct culture outside of white America. That Hurston tells the story of these uneducated people without making them out as an inferior people shows her connection to the African-American artistic awakening that took place in the 1920s and 30s.

Although Their Eyes Were Watching God was a product of the artistic ideals of the Harlem Renaissance, it came out in 1937, after the actual movement was functionally over. The Great Depression started in 1929, and complicated everything, in the process destroying much of the carefree creativity of Harlem in the 20s. The world of literature in the 30s was dominated by a style known as Social Realism, where the novel was seen as a device to reveal social flaws in the country, and often to advance a political message as well. Hurston’s imaginative story was a product of an earlier time, and although fitting as a Harlem Renaissance work, it was actually out of place among the dominant literary works of the 30s.

Resource: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/eyes/context.html