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Quick Facts
- NAME: Zora Neale Hurston
- OCCUPATION: Civil Rights Activist, Author
- BIRTH DATE: January 07, 1891
- DEATH DATE: January 28, 1960
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Notasulga, Alabama
- PLACE OF DEATH: Fort Pierce, Florida
Best Known For
Anthropologist and novelist Zora Neale Hurston was a fixture of the Harlem Renaissance before writing her masterwork, Their Eyes Were Watching God.
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Play NowZora Neale Hurston. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 09:43, May 23, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/zora-neale-hurston-9347659.
Zora Neale Hurston. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/zora-neale-hurston-9347659 [Accessed 23 May 2013].
"Zora Neale Hurston." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 23 2013, 09:43 http://www.biography.com/people/zora-neale-hurston-9347659.
"Zora Neale Hurston," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/zora-neale-hurston-9347659 [accessed May 23, 2013].
"Zora Neale Hurston," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/zora-neale-hurston-9347659 (accessed May 23, 2013).
Zora Neale Hurston [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 23] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/zora-neale-hurston-9347659.
Zora Neale Hurston, http://www.biography.com/people/zora-neale-hurston-9347659 (last visited May 23, 2013).
Zora Neale Hurston. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/zora-neale-hurston-9347659. Accessed May 23, 2013.
Synopsis
Born in Alabama on January 7, 1891, Zora Neale Hurston spent her early adulthood studying at various universities and collecting folklore from the South, the Caribbean and Latin America. She published her findings in Mules and Men. Hurston was a fixture of the Harlem Renaissance, rubbing shoulders with many of its famous writers. In 1937, she published her masterwork of fiction, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston died in Florida in 1960.
Contents
Early Life
Born on January 7, 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama, writer Zora Neale Hurston created several acclaimed works of fiction, including the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. She was also an outstanding folklorist and anthropologist who worked to record the stories and tales of many cultures, including her own African-American heritage.
Hurston was the daughter of two former slaves. Her father, John Hurston, was a pastor, and he moved the family to Florida when Hurston was very young. Following the death of her mother, Lucy Ann (Potts) Hurston, in 1904, and her father's subsequent remarriage, Hurston lived with an assortment of family members for the next few years.
To support herself and finance her efforts to get an education, Hurston worked a variety of jobs, including as a maid for an actress in a touring Gilbert and Sullivan group. In 1920, Hurston earned an associate degree from Howard University. She published one of her earliest works in the university's newspaper. A few years later, she moved to New York City's Harlem neighborhood, where she became a fixture in the area's thriving art scene.
Writing Career
Living in Harlem in the 1920s, Hurston befriended the likes of Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, among several others. Her apartment, according to some accounts, was a popular spot for social gatherings. Around this time, Hurston experienced a few early literary successes, including placing in short-story and playwriting contests in Opportunity magazine.
Hurston also had serious academic interests. She landed a scholarship to Barnard College, where she pursued the subject of anthropology and studied with Franz Boas. In 1927, Hurston returned to Florida to collect African-American folk tales. She would later publish a collection of these stories, entitled Mules and Men (1935). Hurston also contributed articles to magazines, including the Journal of American Folklore.
Also in the mid-1930s, Hurston explored the fine arts through a number of different projects. She worked with Langston Hughes on a play called Mule-Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life—disputes over the work would eventually lead to a falling out between the two writers—and wrote several other plays, including The Great Day and From Sun to Sun.
Hurston released her first novel, Jonah's Gourd Vine, in 1934. Two years later, she received a Guggenheim fellowship, which allowed her to work on what would become her most famous work: Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). She wrote the novel while traveling in Haiti, where she also studied local voodoo practices.
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