HURSTON, ZORA NEALE

Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891–January 28, 1960) was a folklorist, fiction writer, playwright, and essayist. She was a central figure in the African-American cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. Her gravestone in Fort Pierce, Florida, bears an inscription coined by the writer Alice Walker, "A Genius of the South." The epitaph sums up not only the formidable nature of Hurston's accomplishments, but also the symbolic importance that she and her work claim in the annals of African-American cultural history.

More myths have circulated about Zora Neale Hurston than perhaps any other African-American woman writer. Recently, scholars have revealed her birthplace as Notasulga, Alabama, but for years historians and biographers believed that Hurston was born in Eatonville, Florida, the country's first incorporated all-black town. Hurston spent most of her childhood in Eatonville, whence she drew much of her literary inspiration. Hurston contributed to the illusions that continue to dominate popular stories about her life by fabricating details of her personal history, such as her date of birth, which was misidentified for many years as 1901. In Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston (2002), author Valerie Boyd speculates that Hurston began revising her birth date in 1917, when she subtracted ten years in order to qualify for free schooling.

Hurston attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., sporadically between 1919 and 1925, and published her first short story, "John Redding Goes to Sea," in Stylus, the university literary magazine. By 1925, the Harlem Renaissance was in full swing, and Hurston moved to New York, where she collected prizes for her fiction and drama, and studied anthropology with Franz Boas at Columbia University. Hurston graduated from Barnard College with a bachelor's degree in 1928.

The Great Depression was particularly disastrous for African-Americans, and the economic devastation caused by the Depression extinguished the better part of the Harlem Renaissance. Zora Neale Hurston thrived in the 1930s, however, finding success in the literary arena and beyond. During the 1930s, she did anthropological fieldwork in Haiti, Jamaica, the Bahamas, South Carolina, and the Florida Everglades. Her books on folklore, Mules and Men (1935) and Tell My Horse (1938), reflect the depth and breadth of her research. Hurston's father inspired her first book, Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), a novel. She wrote her second and most influential novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), in Haiti in seven weeks. The novel is a lyrical exploration of a black woman's search for romantic love and self-definition. Her third novel, Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939), is a retelling of the biblical story of Exodus. Hurston's final novel, Seraph on the Suwanee (1948), breaks convention with its focus on white characters. Her final published work was Dust Tracks on the Road (1942), an autobiography whose inconsistencies have led many critics to treat it more like fiction than fact. Hurston's productivity did not result in financial security, however, and she would always scramble for work to support her creative ambitions. She died in 1960 of hypertensive heart disease in Fort Pierce, Florida.

See Also: AFRICAN AMERICANS, IMPACT OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION ON; LITERATURE.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carby, Hazel. Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Novelist. 1987.

Hemenway, Robert. Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography. 1977.

Hurston, Zora Neale. 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. 1979.

Hurston, Zora Neale. Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters, edited by Carla Kaplan. 2002.

EMILY BERNARD