It was May in Eau Gallie, Florida, and Zora Neale Hurston was headed to church. Shutting the door to her cottage near the shores of the Indian River, Hurston set out to join the local Baptist congregation, where she would hear a sermon delivered by its pastor, the Reverend C. C. Lovelace. Hurston had been pondering the question of how to represent the experience of a church service in a theatrical performance. “Know what I am attempting?” she had written to Langston Hughes a few days earlier, in April 1929. “To set an entire Bapt. service word for word and note for note.” Listening to Lovelace's sermon in Eau Gallie, Hurston admired how the preacher's oratory built seamlessly from a creation story into a fiery vision of divine retribution. She was so taken by the poetry of Lovelace's words that she transcribed his sermon in its entirety. This sermon later served as the centerpiece of the play The Sermon in the Valley, a work that testifies to Hurston's aim to render a Baptist service “word for word and note for note.” Like many of her plays, The Sermon in the Valley reveals the intimate entanglement of her ethnographic compositions and her writing for the stage.

那是佛罗里达州欧加利的五月，佐拉·尼尔·赫斯顿正前往教堂。赫斯顿关上了印度河沿岸小屋的门，开始加入当地的浸信会会众，在那里她会听到牧师 CC Lovelace 牧师的布道。赫斯顿一直在思考如何在戏剧表演中表现教堂服务体验的问题。“知道我在尝试什么吗？” 几天前，1929 年 4 月，她写信给兰斯顿休斯。一个字一个字，一个字一个字地服务。” 赫斯顿在 Eau Gallie 聆听了洛夫莱斯的布道，钦佩这位传教士的演讲如何从一个创世故事无缝地构建成一个神圣报应的炽热愿景。她被洛夫莱斯的诗迷住了 她把他的讲道全文抄录下来。这篇布道后来成为该剧的核心山谷布道证明赫斯顿旨在“逐字逐句”地提供浸信会服务的作品。像她的许多戏剧一样，《山谷布道》揭示了她的民族志作品和她的舞台写作之间的密切联系。