Profile of Zora Neale Hurston on Famous Like Me

Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891–January 28, 1960) was an African-American folklorist and author. Her best-known work is most likely Their Eyes Were Watching God. She belonged to the literary period known as the Harlem Renaissance.

Life

Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama and grew up in Eatonville, Florida.

She began her undergraduate studies at Howard University before transferring to Barnard College where she received her B.A. in anthropology in 1928. While at Barnard, she conducted ethnographic research under her advisor, the noted anthropologist Franz Boas at Columbia University. She also worked with Ruth Benedict as well as fellow anthropology student Margaret Mead .

Hurston applied her ethnographic training to fiction (Their Eyes Were Watching God) as well as to dance (she assembled and led a dance group which performed works such as the 1932 Broadway performance The Great Day -- see References below). In addition, Hurston traveled to Haiti in 1937 and was one of the first academics to conduct an ethnographic study of the Vodun, also a subject of study for fellow dancer/anthropologist Katherine Dunham who was then at the University of Chicago .

Hurston's work slid into obscurity for decades, explainable for a number of reasons, cultural and political.

Dialogue in Hurston's work was influenced by her academic experiences. Thinking like a folklorist, Hurston strove to represent speech patterns of the period which she documented through ethnographic research. For example ( Amy from the opening of Jonah's Gourd Vine):

Quote:"Dat's a big ole resurrection lie, Ned. Uh slew-foot, drag-leg lie at dat, and Ah dare yuh tuh hit me too. You know Ahm uh fightin' dawg and mah hide is worth money. Hit me if you dare! Ah'll wash yo' tub uh 'gator guts and dat quick."

Some critics during her the time felt, however, that Hurston's decision to render language in this way made a caricature of Black culture and thus not deserving of respect. In more recent times, however, critics have praised Hurston for her artful capture of the actual language and idiom of the day.

During the 1930s and 1940s when her work was published, the preminent Black American author was Richard Wright. Unlike Hurston, Wright wrote in explicitly political terms, using the struggle of Black Americans for respect and economic advancment as both the setting and the motivation for his work.

Wright's works supported the leftist political struggle of the 1930s during the Great Depression. Other popular Black authors of the time, such as Ralph Ellison and Langston Hughes, were also aligned with Wright's vision of the struggle of Black Americans. Hurston's work was ignored because it was apolitical, simply did not fit in with this struggle. Because her work was not connected to more popular theme's in mainstream afro-american writing, it slid into obscurity untill it was resdiscovered in the 1970s.

She covered the 1954 Florida murder trial of Ruby McCollum with journalist/author and civil rights advocate William Bradford Huie. Her detachment from the wider civil rights movement struggle was demonstrated by Hurston's opposition to the Supreme Court ruling in the Brown v Board of Education case (1954) in the letter, Court Order Can’t Make the Races Mix, to the Orlando Sentinel in August, 1955. The letter caused a furor and proved to be Hurston's last public intervention.

Hurston passed away in obscurity and was buried in an unmarked grave until fiction writer Alice Walker found her grave and marked it in 1975, sparking a virtual Hurston renaissance.

Revival

The article, In Search of Zora Neale Hurston, by Alice Walker was published in the March 1975 issue of Ms. Magazine. This article revived interest in her work. The rediscovery of Hurston's work has coincided with the popularity and critical acclaim of authors such as Toni Morrison and Walker herself, whose works are centered in a Black American experience which includes, but does not necessarily focus on racial struggle.

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