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Lives in Two Languages: An Exploration of Identity and Culture
by Linda Watkins-Goffman
A Reader's Guide
These questions will guide you as you read the novels and excerpts from the novels that appear in Lives in Two Languages.
Questions from the excerpt from Lives in Two Languages
First Excerpt (pp. 100-101)
- What is Zora Neale Hurston's opinion of stereotypes, and why is it controversial?
- What do you think that she means with her remark in the last sentence about class in the Negro race?
- Richard Rodriguez has controversial views about identity and culture. How are he and Hurston alike? Different?
Second Excerpt (p.103)
- Explain what Hurston means when she says, "I am not tragically colored."
- Give a summary of a contrasting point of view with regards to race in the United States. Then read the excerpt by Mark Mathabane on pp 109-115 of Lives in Two Languages. How is he alike and how is he different from Hurston?
Questions from the autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road (1996)
- Explain how Hurston's real-life experience was reflected in her writing Their Eyes Were Watching God (1998).
- What is Hurston's perspective on religion, especially Christianity?
- Why is it that Hurston is not bitter in spite of being poor and having negative experiences in her life, such that her father left home when she was young?
- Describe Eatonville, the town in which Hurston grew up. How do you think living there influenced her identity?
- Hurston uses metaphor to express ideas. Find some of these, read them aloud, and give your own interpretation of each.
For more on Hurston, particularly tales and lore based on her anthropological work in the South, try Mules and Men (1994).
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