Journal | Lagoonscapes
Monographic journal issue | 4 | 2 | 2024
Research Article | Slow Violence, Sacrifice, and Survival: Environmental Catastrophe as (Eco)Feminist Freedom in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God
Slow Violence, Sacrifice, and Survival: Environmental Catastrophe as (Eco)Feminist Freedom in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God
Abstract
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston makes visible ‘slow violence’ and ‘sacrifice zones’ to establish a feminist future for her protagonist, Janie. The novel shows a fictional rendering of the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane, a storm that Janie survives. In this article, the Author contends that Janie’s survival of the storm – her surmounting of ‘slow violence’ and bypassing of sacrifice in the ‘sacrifice zone’ – emboldens her to overcome patriarchal violence at the novel’s conclusion. Hurston expresses a gendered writer-activism critiquing not only environmental racism, but the intersectional battles of Black women experiencing environmental and patriarchal violence.
Submitted: March 20, 2024 | Accepted: July 11, 2024 | Published Dec. 6, 2024 | Language: en
Keywords Ecofeminism • Slow violence • African American Studies • Sacrifice zones • Intersectionality • Ecocriticism • Harlem Renaissance
Copyright © 2024 Holly Nelson. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/LGSP/2785-2709/2024/02/010
