Jonah's Gourd Vine

Jonah's Gourd Vine is the 1934 debut novel by Zora Neale Hurston.[1] The novel is a semi-autobiographical novel describing the migration of characters, similar to her parents, from Alabama to Hurston's home of Eatonville, Florida.[1]

It took Hurston only three to four months to write the novel.[2] The novel's title derives from Jonah 4.6–10, using the gourd vine from the passage as a metaphor for the main character of the novel, John Pearson, a philandering preacher.[2][3]

The novel explores the dysfunction of marriage, proceeding over multi-generational African American communities.[4] The novel also explores other themes common to African American literature, including escapism[5] and racial politics.[6]

References
  1. "Plot Summaries". Zora Neale Hurston Digital Archive. Center for Humanities and Digital Research at University of Central Florida.
  2. "Jonah's Gourd Vine (novel, 1934)". Anacostia Museum, Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 2016-04-07.
  3. Ciuba, Gary (2000-01-01). "The Worm against the Word: The Hermeneutical Challenge in Hurston's Jonah's Gourd Vine". African American Review. 34 (1): 119–133. doi:10.2307/2901188. JSTOR 2901188.
  4. Kanthak, John F. (2005-01-01). "Legacy of Dysfunction: Family Systems in Zora Neale Hurston's Jonah's Gourd Vine". Journal of Modern Literature. 28 (2): 113–129. doi:10.1353/jml.2005.0029. ISSN 1529-1464.
  5. Fernandes, Lilly (2013-04-24). "Escape Motif in Zora Neale Hurston's "Jonah's Gourd Vine"". English Language and Literature Studies. 3 (2): 50. doi:10.5539/ells.v3n2p50. ISSN 1925-4776.
  6. Steverson, Delia Dennise (2015-07-03). "Zora Neale Hurston's Racial Politics in JONAH'S GOURD VINE". The Explicator. 73 (3): 226–228. doi:10.1080/00144940.2015.1065223. ISSN 0014-4940.
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