ABSTRACT
Critics mostly writing in the 1980s and 1990s did offer readings of the essay. The two most prominent came from the literary and cultural critics Hazel Carby and Paul Gilroy, both of whom criticize Zora Neale Hurston for limiting the possible meanings of black expression. One can, read "Characteristics" as anticipating some of the responses. While the essay reflects a staunch commitment to folk culture as the wellspring of black expression, it also takes issue with the middle-class black person who "scorns to do or be anything Negro" in an effort to "ape all the mediocrities of the white brother". Hurston never wavered from the political and artistic commitments spelled out in her essay. Indeed, her responses to Alain Locke and Richard Wright show her doubling down on her assertion that personal history gives her special access to the folk culture that she views as most representative of African American-ness.
