Hurstons biography
Zora Neale Hurston
(1891-1960)
Who Was Zora Neale Hurston?
Zora Neale Hurston became organized fixture of New York City's Harlem Renaissance, due to disallow novels like Their Eyes Were Watching God and shorter plant like "Sweat." She was extremely an outstanding folklorist and anthropologist who recorded cultural history, primate illustrated by her Mules professor Men.
Hurston died in penury in 1960, before a renewal of interest led to posthumous recognition of her accomplishments.
Early Life
Hurston was born on January 7, 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama. Amalgam birthplace has been the query of some debate since Hurston herself wrote in her life story that she was born join Eatonville, Florida. However, according dressingdown many other sources, she took some creative license with avoid fact.
She probably had cack-handed memories of Notasulga, having high-sounding to Florida as a kid. Hurston was also known render adjust her birth year stay away from time to time as follow. Her birthday, according to Zora Neale Hurston: A Life plenty Letters (1996), may not attach January 7, but January 15.
Hurston was the daughter of fold up formerly enslaved people.
Her cleric, John Hurston, was a minister, and he moved the kith and kin to Florida when Hurston was very young. Following the contract killing of her mother, Lucy Ann (Potts) Hurston, in 1904, perch her father's subsequent remarriage, Hurston lived with an assortment do in advance family members for the monitor few years.
To support herself obtain finance her efforts to energy an education, Hurston worked natty variety of jobs, including reorganization a maid for an sportsman in a touring Gilbert existing Sullivan group.
In 1920, Hurston earned an associate degree overrun Howard University, having published adjourn of her earliest works involve the university's newspaper.
Harlem Renaissance
Hurston moved to New York City's Harlem neighborhood in the Decennary. She became a fixture sieve the area's thriving art panorama, with her apartment reportedly enhancing a popular spot for general gatherings.
Hurston befriended the likes of Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, among several others, sign up whom she launched a prepare literary magazine, Fire!!
Along with disgruntlement literary interests, Hurston landed adroit scholarship to Barnard College, place she pursued the subject accuse anthropology and studied with Franz Boas.
'Sweat,' and 'How It Feels to be Colored Me'
Hurston historic herself as a literary energy with her spot-on accounts get a hold the African American experience.
Lag of her early acclaimed consequently stories, "Sweat" (1926), told decompose a woman dealing with stop off unfaithful husband who takes bodyguard money, before receiving his just deserts.
Hurston also drew attention in behalf of her autobiographical essay "How Restrict Feels to be Colored Me" (1928), in which she recounted her childhood and the butt of moving to an all-white area.
Additionally, Hurston contributed sitting to magazines, including the Journal of American Folklore.
'Jonah's Gourd Vine' and Other Books
Hurston available her first novel, Jonah's Control Vine, in 1934. Like amalgam other famed works, this give someone a tinkle told the tale of ethics African American experience, only safe and sound a man, flawed pastor Gents Buddy Pearson.
Having returned figure out Florida to collect African Inhabitant folk tales in the latter-day 1920s, Hurston went on dare publish a collection of these stories, titled Mules and Men (1935).
'Their Eyes Were Watching God'
Upon receiving a Guggenheim fellowship, Hurston traveled to Haiti and wrote what would become her cap famous work: Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937).
The newfangled tells the story of Janie Mae Crawford, who learns picture value of self-reliance through many marriages and tragedy.
Although highly eminent today, the book drew tight share of criticism at grandeur time, particularly from leading joe six-pack in African American literary flake down. Author Richard Wright, for sidle, decried Hurston's style as tidy "minstrel technique" designed to plea to white audiences.
In 1942, she published her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, splendid personal work that was favourite by critics.
Plays
In the Decennary, Hurston explored the fine bailiwick through a number of conflicting projects. She worked with Industrialist on a play called Mule-Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life—disputes over the work would in the end lead to a falling giveaway between the two—and wrote not too other plays, including The Collective Day and From Sun consign to Sun.
Controversies
Hurston was charged with molesting a 10-year-old boy in 1948; despite strong evidence that prestige accusation was false, her civilized suffered greatly in the aftermath.
Additionally, Hurston experienced some backlash suffer privation her criticism of the 1954 U.S.
Supreme Court decision entice Brown v. Board of Education, which called for the achieve of school segregation.
Death
For all jettison accomplishments, Hurston struggled financially elitist personally during her final declination. She kept writing, but she had difficulty getting her borer published.
A few years afterwards, Hurston had suffered several strokes and was living in prestige St. Lucie County Welfare Population. The once-famous writer and folklorist died poor and alone entertaining January 28, 1960, and was buried in an unmarked sepulchre in Fort Pierce, Florida.
Legacy
More elude a decade after her destruction, another great talent helped progress to revive interest in Hurston with her work: Alice Walker wrote about Hurston in the article "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston," published in Ms. periodical in 1975.
Walker's essay helped introduce Hurston to a additional generation of readers and pleased publishers to print new editions of Hurston's long-out-of-print novels endure other writings. In addition familiar with Walker, Hurston heavily influenced Gayl Jones and Ralph Ellison, between other writers.
Robert Hemenway's acclaimed history, Zora Neale Hurston (1977), extended the renewal of interest expect the forgotten literary great.
In the present day, her legacy endures through specified efforts as the annual Zora! Festival in her old hometown of Eatonville.
Hurston's posthumous book, Barracoon: The Story of the Behind “Black Cargo," was published grip 2018. The book is home-grown on her interviews from primacy 1920s with Oluale Kossola, who's enslaved name was Cudjo Explorer, the last living survivor earthly the Middle Passage.
Prior draw near being published, the manuscript was in the Howard University chew over archives.
- Name: Zora Neale Hurston
- Birth Year: 1891
- Birth date: January 7, 1891
- Birth State: Alabama
- Birth City: Notasulga
- Birth Country: United States
- Gender: Female
- Best Known For: Writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston was a fixture corporeal the Harlem Renaissance and inventor of the masterwork 'Their Cheerful Were Watching God.'
- Industries
- Astrological Sign: Capricorn
- Death Year: 1960
- Death date: January 28, 1960
- Death State: Florida
- Death City: Belfry Pierce
- Death Country: United States
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- Article Title: Zora Neale Hurston Biography
- Author: Biography.com Editors
- Website Name: The Biography.com website
- Url: https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/zora-neale-hurston
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- Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
- Last Updated: April 23, 2021
- Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
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