Zora Neale Hurston
(January 7, 1891
[1]
[2]
?January 28, 1960) was an
American
folklorist,
socio-cultural
anthropologist
, and
author
[3]
focused on
African American culture
during the time of the
Harlem Renaissance
, best known for the 1937 novel
Their Eyes Were Watching God
.
Zora Neale Hurston was born in
Alabama
to her parents who were freedmen or people who used to be enslaved.
[4]
When she was still a child, her family moved to Eatonville,
Florida
which was the first all-black town with its own local
laws
in the
United States
. After her mother died, Hurston worked to grow her education and later ended up in
New York City
during the Harlem Renaissance. This was an influential period in Hurston's life as she saw
African Americans
have more pride in their identity. The result of the Harlem Renaissance was a rise in the number of African Americans who could read and write, which made it easier for them to express themselves using art.
[5]
Zora Neale Hurston left New York City in 1921 to attend
Howard University
where she continued to explore African American
culture
and co-founded the school's
newspaper
The Hilltop
.
[3]
[6]
In 1925, Hurston earned a
scholarship
to
Barnard College
where she studied anthropology with
Franz Boas
. Hurston then continued to learn at
Columbia University
where she got a
graduate degree
in anthropology.
As mentioned above, Zora Neale Hurston studied anthropology under Franz Boas, who was known for his work in
cultural relativism
. This is the idea that each culture has their own
beliefs
and practices so they cannot be compared to one another. It was when she was working with Boas that Hurston began her field work in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance.
Hurston was encouraged by Boas to study the spread of African cultural practices and ideas. This is what led to her studies on African American folklore in the
American south.
Some of these trips to the South were funded by Charlotte Mason who was an American
philanthropist
who supported African Americans during the Harlem Renaissance.
[3]
Hurston was also influenced by Fannie Hurst, who she worked for as an amanuensis, or an artistic writing assistant.
[7]
During this time, Hurston aided her with the writing of
manuscripts
and gathered information about regular people.
Like her influences, Zora Neale Hurston sought to capture and preserve cultures as they were in real life. Hurston wrote about many cultures including
Haiti
and
Jamaica
,
[8]
but most of her writings were about African American culture. Hurston wanted to preserve the
perspective
,
narrative
, and
dialect
of African American populations while fighting
stereotypes
through her writings.
[9]
Hurston's work as a socio-cultural anthropologist is so valued because she herself was an African American woman, and she used
plays
,
books
, and collections of
folktales
.
Zora Neale Hurston's unique writing style she used to preserve
rural
African American dialects set her apart from other anthropologists, but not everyone thought that was a good thing. Hurston's main
critics
were other African Americans who saw her portrayal of rural African Americans as a setback and they felt that she made African Americans sound uneducated.
As mentioned, early in her academic career, Zora Neale Hurston was the co-founder of
The Hilltop,
which is currently the oldest African American collegiate newspaper in the United States.
[10]
After getting her Master's degree, Hurston went on to become a
drama
teacher
at North Carolina Collee for
Negros
, now known as
North Carolina Central University
. Hurston had published multiple
fictional
writings, plays, and books during her
career
. She was also an
employee
at the
library of congress
.
- Color Struck
(1925) in
Opportunity Magazine
- Sweat
(1926)
- How It Feels to Be Colored Me
(1928)
- Hoodoo in America
(1931) in
The Journal of American Folklore
- The Gilded Six-Bits
(1933)
- Jonah's Gourd Vine
(1934)
- Mules and Men
(1935)
- Tell My Horse
(1937)
- Their Eyes Were Watching God
(1937)
- Moses, Man of the Mountain
(1939)
- Dust Tracks on a Road
(1942)
- Seraph on the Suwanee
(1948)
- I Love Myself When I Am Laughing...and Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader
(edited by Alice Walker; introduction by Mary Helen Washington) (1979)
- Sanctified Church
(1981)
- Spunk: Selected Stories
(1985)
- Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life
(play, with
Langston Hughes
; edited with introductions by George Houston Bass and
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
, and the complete story of the Mule bone controversy.) (1991)
- The Complete Stories
(introduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Sieglinde Lemke) (1995)
- Every Tongue Got to Confess
(2001)
- Barracoon
(2019)
- ↑
Boyd, Valerie (2003).
Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston
. New York: Scribner. p. 17.
ISBN
0-684-84230-0
.
- ↑
Hurston, Lucy Anne (2004).
Speak, So You Can Speak Again: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston
. New York: Doubleday. p. 5.
ISBN
0-385-49375-4
.
- ↑
3.0
3.1
3.2
"Zora Neale Hurston | Biography, Books, Short Stories, & Facts | Britannica"
.
www.britannica.com
. Retrieved
2022-12-02
.
- ↑
"Biography: Zora Neale Hurston"
.
National Women's History Museum
. Retrieved
2022-12-02
.
- ↑
"Harlem Renaissance | Definition, Artists, Writers, Poems, Literature, & Facts | Britannica"
.
www.britannica.com
. Retrieved
2022-12-02
.
- ↑
"About ? The Hilltop"
. Retrieved
2022-12-02
.
- ↑
"Fannie Hurst | American writer | Britannica"
.
www.britannica.com
. Retrieved
2022-12-02
.
- ↑
Trefzer, Annette (2000).
"Possessing the Self: Caribbean Identities in Zora Neale Hurston's Tell My Horse"
.
African American Review
.
34
(2): 299?312.
doi
:
10.2307/2901255
.
ISSN
1062-4783
.
JSTOR
2901255
.
- ↑
Neale., Hurston, Zora (2019).
Barracoon: The Story of the Last Slave
. HarperCollins Publishers.
ISBN
978-0-00-836803-6
.
OCLC
1243492891
.
{{
cite book
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link
)
- ↑
"About ? The Hilltop"
. Retrieved
2022-12-02
.