Ecologies from the Cargo: Zora Neale Hurston and the Long Anthropocene

Abstract:This essay argues that Zora Neale Hurston's work reorients several key ideas central to contemporary Black studies and the environmental humanities. In particular, I examine how Hurston's understanding of the co-constitutional relationship between human and nonhuman worlds and her search for a narrative across temporal and geographical scales connects the Black diaspora and restructures our understanding of the Anthropocene. This essay claims that Hurston's work anticipates an incipient strand of contemporary Black studies that turns to ecology both to understand and imagine a world outside of anti-Black violence.