Who is Zora Neale Hurston?
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) is one of the most celebrated writers of the Harlem Renaissance. As a writer, she posthumously became recognized not just as a female or an African American writer, but simply as a fantastic writer who has well earned her place in the Literary Canon. Her most famous work is the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, but she was prolific, composing several other novels, plays, her autobiography, and numerous short stories and essays. Alice Walker, Tony Morrison and Maya Angelou all cite Zora Neale Hurston as an extraordinary influence on their careers. In fact, Walker so loved Hurston that she went through significant effort to find her unmarked grave and purchase a headstone for it. Hurston is certainly well worth the admiration of these other writers because her work represents significant scholarship, and strong understanding of anthropology. It continues to resonate with the modern reader. The early life of Zora Neale Hurston was spent in Eatonville, Flor
JFH: They had some finger puppets I had never heard of either! Zora Neale Hurston was an African-American writer in the early to mid years of the 20th century – who still, pretty much, dominates any conversation you want to have about black literature. She’s kind of tremendous. Her book Their Eyes Were Watching God – published in the 30s – is considered a classic. I also think it has, pretty much, one of the greatest titles of any book ANYwhere. She was one of the first to really collect anthropological information about different black cultures – Now, it’s become a cliche – and there are entire SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT which have been incorporated into our higher education – but they are all based on her ground-breaking work. I love her stuff. It took me a while to read it, because I was so turned off by a lot of the Afro-American stuff at my university. I thought she was part of that, part of that whole “trend”. She is most definitely NOT. The finger puppet was made of brown felt, to show
