Zora Neale Hurston, at 36 a mature student at Columbia University, boarded a train from New York to her hometown, the all-black township of Eatonville, Florida, in February 1927.<sup>1</sup> In New York, Hurston was part of the literary and artistic flourishing that was the Harlem Renaissance. She was Florida-bound merely to gather folklore for her BA Anthropology, but under the Harlem influence her research would be repurposed to form the novel <em>Their Eyes Were Watching God</em> (1937).<br><br>In the novel, the reader follows the female protagonist, Janie Crawford, in her pursuit of personal identity. Despite seeking ‘life without being a man’s mule’,<sup>2</sup> Janie becomes trapped in two unhappy marriages, enduring a torrent of physical violence behind closed doors. One day, resplendent in a new blue dress,<sup>3</sup> Janie leaves Eatonville and enters into an erotic third marriage with the vagrant Tea Cake, who introduces her to African-American expressive culture.<sup>4</sup> From working close together in the Everglades fields, to preparing supper, will Janie finally find herself through her love for a man?<br><br><em>Their Eyes</em> was poorly received. The use of phonetic dialect was said to mock the English used amongst black communities<sup>5</sup> — a ‘minstrel technique’ that made ‘the ‘white folks’ laugh’.<sup>6</sup> Hurston’s sexually explicit descriptions were also frowned upon — especially coming from a woman’s perspective. Hurston, however, wanted her characters to live a ‘swarming, passionate life’,<sup>7</sup> going against the grain of the then New Negroes, who in their pursuit of racial equality, wanted to quash the perception of black promiscuity. <br><br>In the end, Hurston’s train journey to Eatonville would not be in vain: <em>Their Eyes</em> is now considered a classic of the Harlem Renaissance.<sup>8</sup><br>