Zora Neale Hurston

~By Darla Xiong

Zora Neale Hurston was a lively person who attracted many friends, and even got on her father’s nerves for all her playfulness. Zora’s colorful personality should be reflected in her writing style.

Zora Neale Hurston was born during 1901 in Eatonville, Florida. She was the fifth of eight children of John and Lucy Ann Potts Hurston. Her father John was a sharecropper, carpenter, and a Baptist preacher; her mother Lucy, a former schoolteacher. Lucy Hurston, died when Zora was nine years old. Lucy encouraged her to be independent and creative. She encouraged all of her children to "jump at de sun". Zora frequently clashed with her father while growing up, and never married.

Shortly after, she joined. Hurston received a lot of criticism in her time by other writers, some of whom were also involved in the Harlem Renaissance. She was one of the shapers of the black literary and cultural movement of the twenties. Darwin Turner was a critic of Hurston's work who tended base his critique of her work on his person views of her personality. He states that all of Hurston's work must be looked at in regards to the above statement. Hurston's work came at a time when critics were both white and black, but were all men. Mary Helen Washington has said that "To a large extent, the attention focused on Zora Hurston's controversial personality and lifestyle has inhibited any objective critical analysis of her work. Few male critics have been able to resist sly innuendoes and outright attacks on Hurston's personal life, even when the work in question was not affected by her disposition or her private affairs" (1979).

But having it written vividly and wittily, it lacked accuracies as Zora attempted demonstrate her life according to the fantasy world she idealized.

Her final novel Seraph on the Suwanee (1948), was set in Florida in the early twentieth century. The book was about a white family named Meserve.

Critics found this book unconvincing, though Zora's writing ability was noted. Zora Neale Hurston received the brilliance of her literary works, after her wonderful achievements. And any aspect of black culture that remains preserved today and continues to enlighten us owes its status in one way or another to Zora Neale Hurston.

Hurston, Zora Neale; compiled by Walker, Alice (1979). "I love myself when I am laughing... And then again when I am looking mean and impressive" pp. 7-26, 169-173. New York: The Feminist Press.

Zora spent most of her childhood in in the town of Eatonville, Florida. It was the first all black community to be incorporated in the United States. Hurston grew up uneducated and poor, but she was immersed with black folk life through out her childhood. She had little experience with racism early on since the town was all one race. This caused her to have unconventional attitudes later in life which alienated her from others.

At the age of fourteen, Hurston was enrolled in the Morgan Academy. She was hired by a traveling drama troupe, Gilbert & Sullivan, as a wardrobe girl and maid. During this time she came to Baltimore. She graduated in June of 1918. Then she went to Howard and got her associates degree in 1920. She kept studying there until 1924.

Hurston went to Barnard College in the later 1920's and studied under anthropologist, Dr. Franz Boas. She continued to work under him later when she attended Columbia University. In 1927, "Papa" Franz as she called him, helped Hurston go back to Eatonville to collect folklore.

Around 1925 Hurston lived in New York , one of her articles she worked on called "Spunk" was published in the black journal Opportunity and caught the attention of such poets as Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. They who were active movers of the Harlem Renaissance.

In the Caribbean, Zora Neale Hurston wrote the book she is probably most known for Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston focused primarily on African American culture, one of the characters say " you know, honey, us colored folks is branches without roots..." Hurston was able to tell her stories through. The book was written in 1937, after the ending of a love affair she had with a younger man. It took her seven weeks to complete. The book is about a woman named Janie who learns to find herself and accept an identity that society is not so fast to accept, as a fulfilled and autonomous black woman. Janie also finds love in this novel. Zora Neale Hurston received also love later in her career, the brilliance of her literary works Dust Tracks on a Road (1942) success.

Hurston had a hard time with depicting blacks as defeated, humiliated, degraded, or victimized in her work. This is because she hadn't have experience herself or other African Americans in those ways. She wanted to portray black life in a way unconcerned relationship with white and black. To portray the unawareness of problems attributed to being black. She wanted to show them laughing, celebrating, loving, and struggling.

Zora's literary appeal waned shortly after. Her reputation was scratch in 1948 when she was arrested for molesting a ten-year-old retarded boy. The charges were later dropped. Result of this scandal, it was much of Zora's own doing that tarnished her reputation

Zora Neale Hurston died of hypertensive heart disease on Jan. 28, 1960. The Hurston Family was never very well-to-do, and Zora died without enough money to even pay for her funeral. Undoubtedly she understood the trials and hardships of low finances.

Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker later authors were greatly influenced by her books, and ironically they have addressed the issue of prejudice in their books.


References:
Hurston, Zora Neale (1942, reprinted 1991). Dust tracks on a road. New York: Harper Collins