Zora Neale Hurston was a black novelist, folklorist, journalist and critic who was very unique yet controversial in her most notable works and her personal life. She was born on January 7, 1891 and grew up in Eatonville, Florida where she was submerged in a black community filled with rich knowledge of black culture and folktales. She always had an intrinsic appreciation for becoming a writer since the early years of her life, however, many obstacles and struggled had limited her possible accomplishments because of misconstrued information on her views about black people and their own individual greatness other than the fact that they were oppressed and disadvantaged individuals. Alex La Guma was born in the sixth district of Cape Town in 1925 and was also an intellectual writer who wrote about the experiences of black people in Africa. However, he on the other hand focused on the oppression and harsh realities of the African people under the terrorizing minority white group that imposed apartheid, because he grew up experiencing discrimination.
As a young child Hurston lost her mother who had always motivated her to strive past her boundaries and pursue her desires to become a great writer. This in turn led her to live with many different relatives and move around without an actual home. However, these experiences helped shield her from the racial and prejudicial white society in America that other black writers have faced in their careers. (Helen, 64) She portrayed these experiences in her writings to show that black people in America were more than just oppressed, targeted, and economically disadvantaged victims. They had more to offer than what they were perceived as. In the article it stated that during the twenties and forties there was pressure placed on black writers to defend black people, protesting against racism and oppression while others wanted writers to create respectable characters that would “be a credit to the race.” (Helen, 66) As someone who hasn’t really experienced racism she could not express these issues because she did not see black people as defeated, victimized nor degraded. Hurston saw potential and drive in her people, there isn’t anything that will halt them from succeeding besides their own will. Hurston says, “But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are hurt about it… No, I do not weep at the world – I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.” (Helen, 66) Her quote explains that she was not going to let society define her by the color of her skin and the circumstances that were present. She was going to make being black count for something by being optimistic, honing her intellect and literature and succeeding in her endeavors to show her audience that black people were just as human as any other.
Challenging circumstantial issues and incorporating them in her books did not however optimize her success. Her book, “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” was claimed to not have a direct message nor take away about black folks. Her works were thought to make white people laugh and not show the true oppression of her people. Hurston states, “…blacks had adorned a rather pallid form of American culture with colorful, dramatic, dynamic contributions. In every form she saw original expression rooted in black culture…Whatever the Negro does of his own volition he embellishes.” (Helen, 66) Hurston refused to downgrade the rich qualities that were unique to black people which society refused to expose. Choices she made weren’t favorable as it hadn’t brought her a consistent source of income. “The American publishing industry were not interested in the average struggling non-morbid negro because more money could be made exploiting the race problem of oppressed sharecroppers.”(Helen, 66) This quote again emphasizes the struggles she had with the publishing industries who did not favor her form of storytelling and reduced her chances at becoming a successful writer because stories on black excellence did not sell well.
Alex La Guma of Cape Town on the other hand, became involved in the League of Young Communists and the Communist Party until the 1950s. Later, he became a leader of the liberation movement in 1956 and involved in more unions and organizations such as as the Coloured People’s Congress which gave rise to the Freedom Charter that had explained the rights and struggles of nonwhites and their guidelines against apartheid. (Santos, 55) In the late 1950s, Guma began writing about the progressive New Age in Africa. During these years, he took part in the segregationist republic and got arrested for voicing his disagreements. This took a major toll on him because he was under house arrest, had no trial, all his works were banned and he had no line of communication with the public for five years. (Santos, 55) However, he still kept writing about the apartheid and the struggles of Africans during this time and published his first novel, A Walk in the Night in Nigeria. This novel discussed the struggles against oppression, effects of apartheid, and themes of protests in his hometown, Cape Town. Guma was an intellectual who found it crucial to express the realities and oppression of the black people under the apartheid and minority white groups controlling a population that consists mostly of Africans.
Guma got arrested more times afterwards for vocalizing his opinions and after exile the struggle against Africa’s apartheid did not let him free of discrimination and envy. He wrote novels such as, In the Fog of the Season’s End, A Three-Fold Cord and Time of the Butcherbird which he utilized sources from “His early experiences in the poor neighborhoods and among the masses of black laborers, and underground struggle against apartheid, the racists regime’s repressive mechanisms, the vicissitudes and hopes of the people's rebellion, the high handedness and injustice of the segregationist apparatus, bantustanization, and the stark psychology of the Afrikaner ruling class and the descendants of the English…making it eloquent testimony to the people’s rebelliousness against oppression.” (Santos, 56) Guma explicitly conveyed the African terror and persecution that the white minority imposed on them through his own real experiences and the psychology of these two groups of individuals. He never stopped fighting for what he believed in and was always determined to revolutionize the circumstances.
The writing styles of both writers were very different in the sense that Hurston desired to show black culture and literature in an enlightening method that breaks free from the stereotype that they are oppressed and disregarded from society whereas Guma wrote literature on the movement against the apartheid era in Cape Town with a distinct style that discussed their oppression. Both authors did struggle with getting their works published and in front of the public’s view. Hurston struggled in getting published because her works weren’t deemed as appropriate to the literature industry. She died penniless in a home that wasn’t hers only to be recognized years later after her death for the amazing literary contribution she gave to the world of black literature. Guma got arrested multiple times, was under house arrest and also had his works banned which set him at a disadvantage for expressing his political concerns. Both authors’ experience’s had shaped their literary elements and interestingly enough they resisted to succumb to external sources that pressured them to change their views and opinions on literature and the black experience.