The book investigates African American writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston's cultural
space. More specifically different aspects of the interplay of space and place are studied in
two of her novels: Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934). Besides
representing the peak of her art as a novelist the novels present fine examples of her
philosophy of culture her conceptions of space and ways of place construction. The richness
and vitality of her novels denote a particular view of culture and an African American way of
authentication that enable her to construct a fulfilling cultural universe for the individual
with despite inbuilt tensions. The cultural space Hurston establishes is embedded in an African
American cultural context associated with the South. At the same time her cultural space proves
to be diverse due to inward heterogeneity and external contexts.
