“Taking mighty strides across the world”: positioning Zora Neale Hurston in the ecofeminist tradition

In the hand-drawn image decorating the Christmas card that Zora Neale Hurston sent to Fannie Hurst in December 1926, it appears deeply symbolic that Hurston omits from the woman’s face any anatomically distinguishable features (Hurston 1926). That this faceless woman almost merges into the surrounding ecology by virtue of her anonymity and her neutrality appears to symbolize an equilibrium between the orders of lifeforms as much as the worlds of the human and nonhuman. Yet, the faceless woman seems to also personify the silencing of women’s voices in the expression of female interactions with the natural environment.