Zora Neale Hurston

1. Zora Neale Hurston By: Rachel Porter and Cambrie Maxwell

2. Author’s Life • Born in 1891 in Notasugla, No one knows exact date (Black people didn’t have birth certificates at that time) • Fifth of eight children • Her father, John Hurston, was a Baptist preacher, tenant farmer Alabama • and carpenter • Not a family man • Made life difficult for his family and children • Preferred Zora’s sister Sarah over Zora • Her mother, Lucy Hurston was the “driving force and strong support for all her children” • Passed away when Zora was only a preteen

3. Author’s Life Con’t… • When she was three her family moved to Eatonville, Florida, an all black town • The first incorporated black community in America • For this reason her childhood was protected from racism • Her father later became mayor of this town • To Zora, Eatonville would become a utopia, glorified in her stories as a place black Americans could live as they desire, independent of white society and all its ways. • After the death of her mother she "passed around the family like a bad penny" by her father for the next several years until she was old enough to support herself.

4. Author’s Life Con’t… • Upon reaching adulthood Zora was working as a domestic, still leading an traveling life, with little schooling. • She was in Baltimore in 1917, when through the aid of her employer she entered in Morgan Academy (the high school division of Morgan College) • She was actually twenty-six at the time but wrote her age as sixteen and her birth date as 1901 • She graduated in 1918 • When saved up enough money she went to college at Howard University in Washington DC • Was inspired to write while here

5. Author’s Life Con’t… • Later moved to Harlem and perused at writing career • She became a recognized member of the Harlem Renaissance • The Harlem Renaissance was a period during which black artists broke with the traditional dialectal works and imitating white writers to explore black culture and express pride in their race. • Zora and her stories about Eatonville became a major force in shaping these ideals.

6. Author’s Life Con’t… • Her biographer Robert Hemenway said “Zora Hurston was an extraordinarily witty woman and she acquired an instant reputation in New York for her high spirits and side-splitting takes of Eatonville life. She could walk into a room of strangers…and almost immediately gather people charm, amuse and empress them.” • During this time she worked as secretary for Fannie Hurst and entered Bernard College • Her career took her into two directions- at Bernard she developed an interest in black Folk tradition by studying with the famous anthropologist Franz Boas, and in Harlem she became well known as a story teller • Graduated in 1927 from Bernard

7. Author’s Life Con’t… • After her graduation, she received a fellowship to return to Florida to study the oral traditions of Eatonville. • When the fellowship money ran out, Zora was supported by Mrs. R. Osgood Mason an elderly white patron of the arts. • Under Mrs. Mason’s support, Zora experienced the difficulty of censoring her work because well off white people were the sponsors of, and often the chief audience for, her work. • Mrs. Mason required permission before publishing any of the work that she had subsidized

8. Author’s Life Con’t… • Her work wasn’t entirely popular with the male intellectuals of the Harlem community because many thought her to be either naive or egotistical • She quarreled with Langston Hughes because she rejected the idea that a black writer’s chief concern should be how blacks are portrayed to the white reader. • Great Depression caused her to turn fully to writing • For the last decade of her life she lived in Florida working from time to time as a maid • She died in 1960

9. Popular Literary Works • Her most important and first novel, Jonah’s Gourd Vine was published mid 1930’s, but there was little interest in it or African American writing in general • Mules and Men was her best selling book published in 1935 • Most popular and critical favorite was her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God published in 1937 • She published a few other works and then her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, in 1942, but at this point she had no audience • Hurston's present reputation and popularity are evidenced by the reprinting of several of her works in the late 1980s, including Their Eyes Were Watching God

10. Writing Style • Zora wrote in a narrative recreation of southern black rural dialect (“Local Color”) • Her fiction, which depicts relationships among black residents in her native southern Florida, was largely unconcerned with racial injustices. • Zora did not write to “uplift her race” because in her view it was already uplifted • Because her choice writing style was realism, she was not embarrassed to present her characters as a mixture of good and bad, strong and weak. • Critics have argued that she was a feminist writer because she didn’t need a man to lean on • Hurston's novel has become a staple in women's studies programs and has inspired many female authors to create non-stereotypical black female characters.