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Overview
Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “Sweat” was first published in 1926 in the Harlem Renaissance literary journal Fire!!
. Like Hurston’s classic 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, “Sweat” takes place in a small Black community in Florida and tells the story of a woman overcoming an abusive marriage. The story, largely written in dialect, showcases Hurston’s unique position as both a native of a similar Florida town and a trained anthropologist, specializing in African American and Caribbean folktales. Despite her work having fallen into obscurity for decades, Hurston is revered today as a giant of the Harlem Renaissance and American fiction writing.
