SOURCE: “Hurston as Dramatist: The Florida Connection,” in Zora in Florida, University of Central Florida Press, 1991, pp. 121-29.

In the following essay, Carson discusses Hurston's early “Florida” plays: Color Struck, The First One, and The Fiery Chariot.

While a considerable amount of scholarly work exists on the writing career of Zora Neale Hurston, the bulk of it concerns her novels, in particular Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), which is considered by most to be her finest literary achievement. Her other works, including short stories, folklore studies, and the autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), occasionally attract some critical attention, especially in the last decade. Other dimensions of Hurston's long career, which spanned nearly forty years, have largely been ignored altogether or at best afforded only a passing mention. This is true of her several early poems, her journalistic work, and especially her plays. That Hurston's plays have not...