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“Sweat” was first published in the first and only issue of the Harlem Renaissance literary journal Fire!!, which was founded by a group of young Black writers, including Hurston, Wallace Thurman, and Langston Hughes. They sought to publish new writing without pressure from white patrons, or older Black intellectuals, to make work that presented Black characters in a positive and uplifting light. The stories and poems in the magazine used experimental forms to explore taboo topics, including feminism, prostitution, and homosexuality. The freedom to create art for art’s sake made publication in Fire!! a turning point in the artistic development of some of the most important writers of the period. 

“Sweat” represents a key moment in Hurston’s writing and in the emergence of Black feminist literature. The story was published eleven years before her masterwork, the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, and contains many of the same themes and other elements. For instance, both are set in the same town and feature a female main character who goes from living under the control of an abusive husband to finding independence without a man. “Sweat” represents Hurston’s first published writing about the topics that are now part of her most famous work. Although Hurston’s writing was out of print for decades in the middle of the twentieth century, the themes at the heart of “Sweat” and Their Eyes Were Watching God drew the attention of a new generation of Black feminist writers and scholars in the 1970s, including The Color Purple author Alice Walker. Critics consider Hurston’s work an important precursor to Black feminist literature that flourished in the coming decades, including the work of Walker and Toni Morrison.

Previous section Zora Neale Hurston and "Sweat" in Context

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