Drenched in Light

by Zora Neale Hurston

While Drenched in Light was written during the Harlem Renaissance, and the protagonist, a young spirited girl named Isis Watts, embodies African American art, readers today would do well to learn from Zora Neale Hurston's enchanting short story about the power of the gift of joy.

"She raced up and down . . . like a round-eyed puppy hailing gleefully all travelers. Everybody in the country, white and colored, knew little Isis Watts, Isis the Joyful."

Genres: Short Stories, Classics

Unknown Binding

First published December 1, 1924

About the author

Novels, including Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and nonfiction writings of American folklorist Zora Neale Hurston give detailed accounts of African American life in the South.

In 1925, Hurston, one of the leaders of the literary renaissance, happening in Harlem, produced the short-lived literary magazine Fire!! alongside Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman shortly before she entered Barnard College. This literary movement developed into the Harlem renaissance.

Hurston applied her Barnard ethnographic training to document African American folklore in her critically acclaimed book Mules and Men alongside fiction Their Eyes Were Watching God . She also assembled a folk-based performance dance group that recreated her Southern tableau with one performance on Broadway.

People awarded a Guggenheim fellowship to Hurston to travel to Haiti and conduct research on conjure in 1937. Her significant work ably broke into the secret societies and exposed their use of drugs to create the Vodun trance, also a subject of study for fellow dancer-anthropologist Katherine Dunham, then at the University of Chicago.

In 1954, the Pittsburgh Courier assigned Hurston, unable to sell her fiction, to cover the small-town murder trial of Ruby McCollum, the prosperous black wife of the local lottery racketeer, who had killed a racist white doctor. Hurston also contributed to Woman in the Suwanee County Jail , a book by journalist and civil rights advocate William Bradford Huie.

Reviews

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

“She was really a princess.”

I wanted to read a little something to celebrate the author’s birthday today. This is a very short but lovely story about Isis Watts, a child so full of life and joy that you want to dance around your troubles like she does when you’re done reading about her.

Happy birthday Zora, and thank you.

[Winterfae *spiro, spero* · Rating 5 out of 5]

This narrative is centered on Isis, and — while told in third-person — is told thus from her point of view. She is the embodiment of not only the Harlem Renaissance, but also joy. Little Isis gives life to those around her through her good cheer and funny antics.

Isis is referred to as “the joyful”, for joy dominates her personality. She possesses an innate happiness and good will, despite the oppression she suffers under her tyrannical, hard-handed grandmother.

The tone of the story is not exactly happy-go-lucky; rather, it has a distinct wistful undertone as the many tribulations seeking to crush her spirit are revealed in the course of the story. Ultimately, however, the theme of enduring light in the face of darkness prevails in Zora Neale Hurston's enchanting tale.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

SPOILERS: Isis is a young black girl living in the deep south in the early 1920s. She seems to be raised by her exhausted and exasperated grandmother who cannot get her to keep to the work expected of the only girl-child in the family. Isis the joyful is liked by everyone, she is "Drenched in Light." What interests me in the reviews of this story is that rarely does anyone mention that she is eventually sold to a white couple, adopted they say, but likely another type of slavery or indentured servitude. Her grandmother is so oppressive and abusive, it's difficult to overcome the inherent racism of the story that maybe she'll be better off with the white folks who take her away for $5, still wearing the tablecloth her grandmother bought in Orlando.

Modern readers may stumble a bit on the dialect, which implies not only a strong accent, but illiteracy on the part of the black characters whose dialogue is spelled phonetically. The author is a fantastic black woman writer of her time, yet her own racism seems to show through as she makes the grandmother so unlikeable, so abusive. I empathize with the grandmother, so maybe the author is just that skillful to write in that way and bring out empathy for a grandmother who seems to be raising yet another brood of children because either the parents are gone, or they are working long, hard hours and Isis is a lot, so full of life and disobedience, in complete ignorance of the difficult life that may face her.

Read in "Downhome: An Anthology of Southern Women Writers," retitled Isis.

[Allana · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
Drenched in Light is a joyful and well written short story that focuses on a young girl whose joy can’t be quite suppressed in spite of, well, everything. Hurston is a master at the short story and this is very well executed, but for some reason (I haven’t figured out exactly what) I just wanted a little more.

[Kyra Richardson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe a 3.5

Really cute story.

[Lia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really cute story! Isie is a very lovable character!

[Ryleigh (Valo) · Rating 3 out of 5]

i LOVED the last sentence, was super sweet and adorable.