Dust Tracks on a Road

Zora Neale Hurston's Dust Tracks on a Road is a descriptive autobiography seen through the eyes of an African American female born into “a pure Negro town.” Telling her story from first-person point of view, rather than as an outside, narrating persona, Hurston effectively invites us into her childhood and enriches our sense of her experiences. Hurston uses informal and slang diction with a somewhat immature structure to assist in this. Throughout the novel, Zora uniquely is unable to perceive herself as a member of an oppressed race but rather an individual of the world. As a matter of fact, Hurston “saw no curse in being black, nor no extra flavor by being white.”
Weaving together memories of her childhood, Hurston paints vivid word pictures to increase the truth of her story. Sharing things such as plentiful foods she ate- "orange, grapefruit, tangerine, guavas"- and childhood games she played- "hide and whoop, chick-mah-chick, hide and seek.” She also describes the lands...