terpretations of, the oppression that plagued them, their families and their colleagues. This was Wright's mission; he considered it his obligation to inform the masses, to educate them, and in doing so, the traumas of his childhood emerged in his work. In the process of conveying the horror of the racial discrimination that threatened his own manhood, Wright included the influences of women as further impediments to his development. Careful analysis of Wright's autobiography strongly suggests that these portrayals of women paralleled the personalities of real women in his life. It is interesting then to examine what differences in Hurston's life urged her to create literature that celebrates the African-American female and vibrantly portrays her search for identity apart from the male community. Hurston was one of these strong women - one who survived adversity, one who survived as an artist, one who survived without defining her identity based on that of a male companion. This, she decided, was worthy of written interpretation. Wright was decidedly unable to accept the African-American female as an individual - as a feeling, thinking and wondering person who had the ability and often the desire to exist entirely separate from his life, or that of any other male. He never observed an independent female role model and was forced to identify the only women in his life with negative forces and ill will. Wright and Hurston existed in separate, and very different worlds, resulting in their failure to concur on what was an appropriate portrayal of the African-American woman in modern literature. Hurston's consciousness of the female experience, especially that of the African-American, is a major factor that sets her apart from her male contemporaries, especially Wright, whose own failure to acknowledge this (due largely to his upbringing) fueled his most intense criticism....
