Collection of essays published between 1982 and 1992 by academics, authors, and critics providing discussions and analysis of Hurston's work.

"The drum with the man skin": Jonah's gourd vine / Eric J. Sundquist -- The emergent voice: the word within its texts / Karla Holloway -- Zora Neale Hurston: changing her own words / Cheryl A. Wall -- "I love the way Janie Crawford left her husbands": emergent female hero / Mary Helen Washington -- Wandering: Hurston's search for self and method / Susan Willis -- Thresholds of difference: structures of address in Zora Neale Hurston / Barbara Johnson -- Breaking out of the conventions of dialect / Gayl Jones -- Their eyes were watching God: Hurston and the speakerly text / Henry Louis Gates, Jr. -- Language, speech, and difference in Their eyes were watching God / Cynthia Bond -- Listening and living: Reading and experience in Their eyes were watching God / Maria Tai Wolff -- Lines of descent; Dissenting lines / Deborah E. McDowell Autoethnography: the an-archic sytle of Dust tracks on a road / Francoise Lionnet-McCumber -- Seraph on the Suwanee / Lillie Howard -- Workings of the spirit: conjure and the space of Black women's creativity / Houston A. Baker, Jr.