Zora Neale Hurston Popular Books

Zora Neale Hurston Biography & Facts

Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891: 17 : 5  – January 28, 1960) was an American author, anthropologist, and documentary filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-20th-century American South and published research on hoodoo and Caribbean Vodou. The most popular of her four novels is Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937. She also wrote more than 50 short stories, plays, and essays. Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama, and moved with her family to Eatonville, Florida in 1894. She later used Eatonville as the setting for many of her stories. In her early career, Hurston conducted anthropological and ethnographic research as a scholar at Barnard College and Columbia University. She had an interest in African-American and Caribbean folklore, and how these contributed to the community's identity. She also wrote about contemporary issues in the black community and became a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Her short satires, drawing from the African-American experience and racial division, were published in anthologies such as The New Negro and Fire!! After moving back to Florida, Hurston wrote and published her literary anthology on African-American folklore in North Florida, Mules and Men (1935), and her first three novels: Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934); Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937); and Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939). Also published during this time was Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica (1938), documenting her research on rituals in Jamaica and Haiti. Hurston's works concerned both the African-American experience and her struggles as an African-American woman. Her novels went relatively unrecognized by the literary world for decades. In 1975, fifteen years after Hurston's death, interest in her work was revived after author Alice Walker published an article, "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston" (later retitled "Looking for Zora"), in Ms. magazine. In 2001, Hurston's manuscript Every Tongue Got to Confess, a collection of folktales gathered in the 1920s, was published after being discovered in the Smithsonian archives. Her nonfiction book Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo", about the life of Cudjoe Lewis (Kossola), was published in 2018. Biography Early life and education Hurston was the fifth of eight children of John Hurston and Lucy Ann Hurston (née Potts). All four of her grandparents had been born into slavery. Her father was a Baptist preacher and sharecropper, who later became a carpenter, and her mother was a school teacher. She was born in Notasulga, Alabama, on January 7, 1891, where her father grew up and her paternal grandfather was the preacher of a Baptist church.: 14–17, 439–440 : 8  When she was three, her family moved to Eatonville, Florida. In 1887, it was one of the first all-black towns incorporated in the United States. Hurston said that Eatonville was "home" to her, as she was so young when she moved there. Sometimes she claimed it as her birthplace.: 25  A few years later, her father was elected as mayor of the town in 1897. In 1902 he was called to serve as minister of its largest church, Macedonia Missionary Baptist. As an adult, Hurston often used Eatonville as a setting in her stories—it was a place where African Americans could live as they desired, independent of white society. In 1901, some northern school teachers had visited Eatonville and given Hurston several books that opened her mind to literature. She later described this personal literary awakening as a kind of "birth".: 3–4  Hurston lived for the rest of her childhood in Eatonville and described the experience of growing up there in her 1928 essay, "How It Feels To Be Colored Me". Eatonville now holds an annual "Zora! Festival" in her honor. Hurston's mother died in 1904, and her father married Mattie Moge in 1905. This was considered scandalous, as it was rumored that he had had sexual relations with Moge before his first wife's death.: 52  Hurston's father and stepmother sent her to a Baptist boarding school in Jacksonville, Florida, but she was dismissed after they stopped paying her tuition. Work and study In 1916, Hurston was employed as a maid by the lead singer of a touring Gilbert & Sullivan theatrical company. In 1917, she resumed her formal education, attending Morgan College, the high school division of Morgan State University, a historically black college in Baltimore, Maryland. At this time, apparently to qualify for a free high-school education, the 26-year-old Hurston began claiming 1901 as her year of birth. She graduated from the high school in 1918. College and slightly after In college, Hurston learned how to view life through an anthropological lens apart from Eatonville. One of her main goals was to show similarities between ethnicities. In 1918, Hurston began her studies at Howard University, a historically black college in Washington, DC. She was one of the first members of the Zeta Phi Beta sorority, founded by and for black women, and she co-founded The Hilltop, the university's student newspaper. She took courses in Spanish, English, Greek, and public speaking, and earned an associate degree in 1920.: 4  In 1921, she wrote a short story, "John Redding Goes to Sea", that qualified her to become a member of Alain Locke's literary club, The Stylus. Hurston left Howard in 1924, and in 1925 was offered a scholarship by Barnard trustee Annie Nathan Meyer to Barnard College of Columbia University, a women's college, where she was the sole black student.: 210  Hurston assisted Meyer in crafting the play Black Souls; which is considered one of the first "lynching dramas" written by a white woman. She conducted ethnographic research with anthropologist Franz Boas of Columbia University and later studied with him as a graduate student. She also worked with Ruth Benedict and fellow anthropology student Margaret Mead. Hurston received her B.A. in anthropology in 1928. Alain Locke recommended Hurston to Charlotte Osgood Mason, a philanthropist and literary patron who had supported Locke and other African-American authors, such as Langston Hughes; however, she also tried to direct their work. Mason became interested in Hurston's work and supported her travel in the South for research from 1927 to 1932: 157  with a stipend of $200 per month. In return, she wanted Hurston to give her all the material she collected about Negro music, folklore, literature, hoodoo, and other forms of culture. At the same time, Hurston needed to satisfy Boas as her academic adviser. Boas was a cultural relativist who wanted to overturn ideas about ranking cultures in a hierarchy of values. After graduating from Barnard, Hurston spent two years as a graduate student in anthropology, working with Boas at Columbia University. Living in Harlem in the 1920s, Hurston befriended writers including Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. Her apartment, according to some accounts, was a popular spot for social gatherings. Aroun.... Discover the Zora Neale Hurston popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Zora Neale Hurston books.