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 heir Eyes Were Watching God, Novel by Zora Neale Hurston, published in 1937. In lyrical prose influenced by the black folktales she heard while assembling her
folklore anthology Mules and Men (1935), she tells the story of Janie Crawford, her three marriages, her increasing self-reliance, and her identity as a black woman. While her first two husbands are domineering, her third, Tea Cake, is easygoing and reluctantly willing to accept Janie as an equal. Hurston manages to characterize these three very different men without resorting to caricature (in the first two instances) or idealization (in the third), and Janie is one of few fictional heroines of the period who is not punished for her sensual nature. The novel is considered Hurston's finest work.
 arlem,
poem (also known as "A Dream Deferred") by Langston Hughes, published in 1951 as part of Montage of a Dream Deferred, an extended poem cycle about Harlem life. The 11-line poem speculates about the consequences of white society's withholding of equal opportunity, and concludes by suggesting that a dream deferred may explode.
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