Zora Neale Hurston is know for her intriguing dialogue choice in Their Eyes Were Watching God. She contrasts beautiful and high caliber “proper” English with a 1920s Black dialect. This striking verbal contrast helped to propel her novel into literary acclaim. By proving that she could access and craft the language of white publishers she was able to draw them into reading a story of and about Black people. This striking contrast helped to illuminate the racist disparities felt between white America and Black.

Rhys uses a similar concept in “Let Them Call It Jazz”. The entire story is written in working class British English. However, her other stories are all written in “proper” English. This distinction feels so slight that your eyes almost glance over it on the first page. It is as if there were just a few typos before you begin to see the pattern of grammar. This dialect helps the reader to take on the identity of the speaker and begin to see how the world seems constantly stacked against her.

Both Rhys and Hurston use their natural dialects compared to “proper” English to help manifest the difficulties of their characters and themselves for the reader. While Rhys uses slight verb changes, and Hurston transliterates a completely different dialect, these points of language work to internalize the reality of time and oppression by creating distance between the characters and those in power, meanwhile drawing the reader into these different experiences in a unique and compelling way.