While Drenched in Light was written during the Harlem Renaissance, and the protagonist, a young spirited girl named Isis Watts, embodies African American art, readers today would do well to learn from Zora Neale Hurston's enchanting short story about the power of the gift of joy. "She raced up and down . . . like a round-eyed puppy hailing gleefully all travelers. Everybody in the country, white and colored, knew little Isis Watts, Isis the Joyful."