The Unbearable Weight of Authenticity
"Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and a Theory of "Touristic Reading
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2956706 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rosemary V Hathaway, Rosemary Hathaway (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 117 |
| Issue | 464 |
| Pages | 168-190 |
| Publication date | 2004-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American Folklore (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8715 • E-ISSN: 1535-1882 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/jaf.2004.0044 |
| OpenAlex | W2108298704 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 11 |
| References cited | 21 |
Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is the focal point in this article for a discussion of "touristic reading," a process that occurs when a reader assumes a fictional text is an authentic and complete representation of its source culture. Although this can happen even when the ethnicity of the writer and reader match, the dynamic is often intensified when their ethnicities differ-that is, when readers read across ethnic (or other) boundaries. Folkloric content in fiction may make texts particularly vulnerable to such readings, but the presence of ethnographic material may also help undermine touristic readings, as evidenced by the resistant and subversive aspects of Hurston's text
Aesthetics · Art · Linguistics · Literature · Reading (process) · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Travel Writing and Literature
National Myths, Resistant Persons
Fictional Murders in Real 'Mean Streets
To Ask Again
Roll yo' hips-don't roll yo' eyes
Reading as Responsible Dialogue in Ana Castillo’s The Mixquiahuala Letters
Reading and Being Read
An Afrofuturist Reading of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God
The ‘internal orientalism’
Rededication
The Burner, the Default, and the Communicative Ethnographer
Reshaping Reality
Zora Neale Hurston
Invisibility blues
Zora Neale Hurston and the Federal Folk
Power, Judgment, and Narrative in a Work of Zora Neale Hurston
The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
The Reader in the Text
How it Feels to Be Colored Me
In Search of Authenticity
New Essays on Their Eyes Were Watching God
The tourist
Within the Circle
Representations of Speech in the WPA Slave Narratives of Florida and the Writings of Zora Neale Hurston
Literary Objectives
Vodou Imagery, African American Tradition and Cultural Transformation in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God
Bloody Mary in the Mirror
The Portal Case
Tradition, Genuine or Spurious
He Can Read My Writing but He sho' Can't Read My Mind
Tourism and Cultural Displays
Verbal Art as Performance1
Thresholds of Difference
| Unique citing works | 11 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,61 |
| Citation span | 2008 - 2022 (15) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |