Richard Wright in an essay entitled, "Between and Laughter and Tears" is very critical of Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. In the essay he states, " Miss Hurston voluntarily continues in her novel the tradition which was forced upon the Negro in the theater, that is, the minstrel technique that makes the "white folk" laugh."

Zora, a women, who, very much like Wright, felt the need to transcend race and felt the need to portray Janie( the portagonist of the novel) as a woman who is not "tragically colored", unlike the sterotypical black figures portrayed in countless mediums at that time.