Zora Neale Hurston, while living in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, was researching voodoo on a more academic level. He was studying with Haiti's most famous hougans and mambos, or priests and priestesses. At that time he was gathering knowledge about voodoo so he could write the text Tell My Horse. Furthermore, around the same time Hurston had finished writing, Their Eyes Were Watching God, in just seven weeks. A close reading of this novel provides the reader with a relationship between voodoo and the text. Hurston not only explores female spirituality and sexuality in Their Eyes Were Watching God, but weaves the two together revealing that voodoo culture plays an important role within the novel, especially in the confrontations between the voodoo goddess Erzulie and the protagonist of the lyrics Janie Crawford. Hurston exploits the society Janie Crawford lives in. Hers is a society in which she is not allowed to live freely and express herself freely. She is repressed in her society because she is a woman and because she is African American. Hurston understands this oppression and uncovers the truth about the status of black women in this time. There were no powerful roles available to them in their American culture or in their African-American culture. Women were despised and were not seen as potentially spiritually and sexually strong people. Hurston opens the door for her protagonist, Janie Crawford, to create a more substantial and powerful life for herself after the many hardships she faces. It leads her down a path to self-determination and this path is embodied by the spirituality of voodoo. “Old, old world mysticism in African terms…a religion of creation and life” (Tell My Horse 376). This is... at the center of the card ......oodoo, which is in the novel tying the value of self-discovery is an integral part of the story comparisons between Janie and Erzulie. Voodoo is believed to have played an important role in the Haitian Revolution in which Haiti gained independence from France. The integration of voodoo imagery and symbolism throughout, Their Eyes Were Watching God, reflects Hurston's belief that self-discovery for African American women lies not in their male-dominated society, but rather in understanding their own sexual strength and spiritual. Hurston perfectly realizes this idea by connecting the female goddess Erzulie with Janie Crawford. Works Cited Tell My Horse. 1938. rptd. in Hurston: Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings. and. Cheryl A wall. New York: Library of America, 1995. 269-555. Their Eyes Were Watching God. 1937. New York: Harper & Row, 1990.