ABSTRACT
Tall, dark, and handsome' was literally the order of the day when an iconoclastic author of the early 20th century chose to deliver up romance laced with the intra racial politics of African Americans in the rural South. Since their nascent forms at the start of the 20th century, popular mass media have shaped the images of gender, sexuality, and gender roles through intentional constructions and strategies. Hurston's autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road attributes her powerful characters of Janie and Tea Cake to her internal need to grieve for a failed romance. New audiences can now debate Janie's choices and evaluate the story's authenticity as a romance. For her part, author Zora Neale Hurston made painful choices in the pursuit of perfected romance in her own life. In the end, she gave herself and others the solace of a dream made into literature, becoming a timeless prescription for love.
