Now, a Literary Moment...

Zora Neale Hurston was a daring writer. Her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, put a new twist on an old form -- the Romantic Quest. Scholar Carla Kaplan:

Carla Kaplan: In 1937, for a black woman writer not yet that well known to take the oldest literary form and rewrite the questor as a sixteen year old black girl was an incredibly bold thing to do.

Hurston's heroine, journeys through physical hardships and loveless marriages to arrive back home, full of self knowledge, and ready to tell her story.

Novelist Alice Walker.

Alice Walker: I so identified with that moment because it is what we all hope. I mean we hope to go and engage the world, on our own terms. And then if we survive -- and we might not, that's the chance we take -- then we come back and we're home.

This Literary Moment was created by the National Endowment for the Arts.