Read the excerpt from Their Eyes Were Watching God. Mrs. Turner, like all other believers had built an altar to the unattainable-Caucasian characteristics for all. Her god would smite her, would hurl her from pinnacles and lose her in deserts, but she would not forsake his altars. Behind her crude words was a belief that somehow she and others through worship could attain her paradise-a heaven of straighthaired, thin-lipped, high-nose boned white seraphs. How does Zora Neale Hurston use Mrs. Turner to present a cultural criticism?

Their Eyes Were Watching God is the best known novel of author Zora Neale Hurston and it was published in 1937.

This excerpt is a critique of the prevailing racial attitudes of the time. Mrs. Turner, a Christian believer, would equate everything that was godly and sacred with caucasian characteristics, including the major characters in the Bible. In practice, this not only meant that black features were seen as less desirable and less "holy," but it also reminds us of the fact that slavery and racism were often justified and legitimized through religion.