Castillo; Echeverra; Espinoza 1

Stephanie Castillo; Ana Echeverra; Marisol Espinoza

Miss Andrea Campaa
Metodologa de la Investigacin Literaria
25 September 2017

Annotated Bibliography: Sweat

Davis, Doris. "De Talkin' Game": The Creation of Psychic Space in Selected Short Fiction
of Zora Neale Hurston. Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 26.2 (Fall, 2007):
269-286. web. 15 Sept 2017. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/20455329>. Doris Davis
explores the creation of space and voice in several of Hurstons writing. She
introduces the topic by going from Zoras main novel to her recently-known short
stories giving some comments (her owns and from other authors) on Hurston's
pieces of writing. The author states specifically what she is to do in the text: [she]
would like to consider the female voice in three example stories and then focus on
Drenched in Light and Sweat as exhibiting patterns [Zora] would later use in
developing the voice of Janie Crawford (271). The text compares Hurstons voice
with others when writing and how she uses literary resources that make them
unique. With regards of Sweat, Davis adds a summary and analysis of the story
comparing it to the biblical myth of Adam and Eve and the serpent among other
authors analysis of the text. This article is pretty useful if you want to focus on her
writing style and how she presents subtle ideas and representations of the black
society between lines. The author gives special comments throughout the whole
article about her as a writer. Hurston is the ultimate trickster, creating characters
whose sharp tongues, deceptions, equivocations, and chicanery secure their survival
() we see a witty dramatization of a collision between would-be street tricksters
and a sharp-tongued black woman (272)
Lupton, Mary Jane. Zora Neale Hurston and the Survival of the Female. The southern
Literary Journal 15.1 (Fall, 1982): 45-54. 18 Sept 2017.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/20077687>. The article focuses on describing the way
in which Zora Neale Hurston portrays the personality and nature of her characters,
particularly by creating an image of a strong woman through themselves. Mary Jane
Lupton begins this text citing a paragraph of Hurstons first novel which describes a
violent incident between a Black man with his wife, in which she survives.
Thereafter, Lupton compares two of her important writings Their Eyes Were
Watching God and Sweat, describing how the strong female character is able to
survive, defend herself and overcome the male oppression of the stories. This is a
useful and reliable article, since the author cites, exemplifies and demonstrates
every point she makes, whose goal is to understand the way in which the characters
are portrayed.
 Castillo; Echeverra; Espinoza 2

Jackson, Chuck. Waste and Whiteness: Zora Neale Hurston and the Politics of Eugenics. African
American Review 34.4 (Winter, 2000): 639-660. 24 de Sept de 2017. <
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2901423>. Chuck Jackson, a doctoral candidate in the
Department of English at Rice University, addresses the concepts of waste and whiteness
and the politics of eugenics in Zora Neal Hurston works. He gives special importance to her
last (and controversial) story Seraph on the Suwanee. Jackson introduces the topic by
mentioning that Hurstons readings often focused on the racial and gender problems on
the texts but saying that the focus has recently been reversed. Then the author suggests
that Seraph's racial and gender problematics can open up the text to further critical
assessment and cultural critique (639). Moving forward he mentions that those
familiarized with Hurstons writing know that representations of washing and cleanness
are recurrent in her work. Here and with regards of Sweat, Chuck mentions it (along with
other stories), to establish a comparative element that can be traced throughout
Hurstons writing. The author gives some comments regarding the mentioned stories
including Sweat. Hurston frames some of her best stories with the resolution of radical
oppositions; In Sweat," it is important to notice the insertion of three key images as
the narrative unfolds: dirt, the whip, and the snake. These images are not simply sexual,
but each has implications for the writing of race and gender in the narrative as well;
The intertwining of race and gender with bodily and psychological impurities suggests
that a turn toward psychoanalysis might assist in interpreting Hurston's work. This article
is very useful when trying to find some ideas on how to address Hurston's short story
Sweat because it present different ways to analise the text.

Cabrera, Katherin and Jessica Figueroa. The Black Female Experience: A Womanist Approach to
Alice Walker's Novels Every Day Use and Roselily, and Zora Neale Hurston's Sweat and
Drenched in Light. Dissertation. Universidad de Santiago de Chile. Santiago de Chile, 2010.
25 Sept 2017. This dissertation is an attempt to analyse Alice Walkers and Zora Neale
Hurstons work regarding Feminist and Womanist approaches. It is divided into five parts,
being the more relevant the Theoretical Framework, the Female Character Descriptions,
and the Analysis. The main objective of this work is to show how the main female
characters in Drenched In Light, Sweat, Every Day Use and Roselily portray Womanist
definitions and main features (7). Focusing on Sweat, the author provides a short
summary of the text separating it from the analysis. Such analysis basically consists in
contrasting this and other writings of Hurston and Walker, recognizing features of the
Womanist Approach in each text. This dissertation is useful if you want to address Sweat
from a Womanist point of view.