Chapter+1



Jamees Wells painted //Escape of the Spies from Canaan// in 1933. Having its roots in the Bible, it takes cues from the story of the Israelites fleeing a city of evil giants. With African Americans as the Israelites and Caucasians as the giants, it represents the African Americans’ distrust of whites, and of their flight North to avoid the racial segregationists in the South. When I first came across the painting, it reminded me of the opening scene of the __Mules and Men__. When Zora first returns to her hometown, she is initially treated as an outsider. Her former townspeople don’t know how to regard her. The mayor even goes through a set of subtle tests to determine if she’s one of them (black people) or one of the others (white people).

To me, the painting could show Zora as the outsider. Even though she is black, to the people with whom she grew up, she is just as much an outsider as white people. By looking at the painting in this way, it could show the dynamics that unfold as Zora attempts to gain access to the inside at the same time that she is being probed by the insiders to determine her status.

http://home.wlu.edu/~connerm/AfAmStudies/Contemporary%20Culture%20Project/Voice%20Of%20African-%20Americans/images/dance.jpg

I looked all over for a title and an artist for this one, but unfortunately I found in on google images and couldn't it in the article that followed. There isn't much to this sketch, it's rather simple, but that is what spoke to me. I saw other pieces of people dancing but there appeared to be too much elegance for what Hurston describes of the 'toe-party'. This is about as close as I could find for what I pictured when I read this chapter. I like the big hands and the expression on their faces, the man looks lively and so happy, she looks to be cool, yet practiced at the art of their dance.