With Their Eyes Were Watching God, this chapter turns to a novel that puts the experiences of African Americans, and, more specifically, an African American woman, front and center. The chapter demonstrates how rhetorical reading can address the politics of technique. More specifically, it argues that Zora Neale Hurston's larger purposes justify her shift to the narrator's voice, even as her
... [Show full abstract] initiation signals that something valuable is lost in that shift. In addition, it argues that the progression calls for her to represent Janie's actual speech at the trial, but that Hurston's decision not to render the speech results in a passage of deficient narration that is a small flaw in her generally powerful design.