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English Literature Author: Zora Neale Hurston
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by Karen Vrotsos
Educator, Writer
New York, New York
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More About Zora Neale Hurston...
Zora Neale Hurston
1891-1960
American
Introduction
Major Works
Chronology
Introduction
A witty, gifted storyteller, a pioneer of literary style, and a flamboyant personality, Zora Neale Hurston was raised in America's oldest incorporated, self-governing, all-black township, Eatonville, Florida. Hurston left home at the age of 14, supporting herself while she earned a high school degree and attending Howard College before she arrived in New York City in 1925. She quickly become a key figure among the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance. While many of her colleagues were urban and/or northern-born and influenced by European literary traditions, Hurston maintained a strong identification with rural southern folk culture. She was a figure of great controversy and died in poverty and obscurity, but she is embraced today as an important and revolutionary artist in a variety of fields. Known mostly for her novels, Hurston was also a filmmaker, folklorist, anthropologist, dramatist, theatrical producer, and travel writer.
Hurston trained with Franz Boas while attending Barnard College in the mid-1920s and became the first black female anthropologist. In the participant-observer style of modern anthropology, she studied and documented African-American oral and religious traditions in the South, collecting folklore, researching hoodoo religion and medicine, and becoming an apprentice to conjure doctors in the hoodoo religion. On film, audio tape, and in writing, she recorded folktales, verbal contests, and hoodoo practices, as well as music, dance, and song. Today, the Hurston collections at the Library of Congress are considered unique documents of traditions that have since vanished or been radically altered by the advent of technology.
In her writing and theater productions, Hurston strove to establish what she considered to be "pure Negro" forms of expression, maintaining fidelity to the black culture that existed to a great extent outside of white cultural influence. Her works -- including four novels, dozens of essays and short stories, two full-length anthropological studies, and various musical productions -- focus mainly on the experience of poor and working class people as expressed through dialect and rituals of speech and interaction.
For Hurston, the beauty, inventiveness, and powerful heritage of black southern dialect, storytelling, boasting contests, "playing the dozens," and the poetry of the black preacher were a birthright that she claimed with pride. But because of the uniqueness of her work and her boldness in defying conventions, many early critics did not recognize her value. Her depiction of folk speech and experience in her novels and anthropological works seemed retrograde to many, including African-American leaders who were striving to "uplift the race" and overcome stereotypes of the rural Negro. Her closest contemporaries accused Hurston of portraying "a backward Negro people." In the 1930s, the novelist Richard Wright accused her of perpetuating the use of "minstrel technique that makes 'white folks' laugh."
Hurtson's politics also attracted criticism. Like most African-American writers of her day, Hurston was often dependent on support by white patrons and publishers, whose sponsorship was usually not very long lasting or munificent. She struggled with poverty and racial expectations, but not without protest, as is evident in her essays "What White Publishers Won't Print," "My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience," and "Crazy for This Democracy," which unfurls a critique of U.S. imperialism. Despite such writings, critics continued to charge her with pandering to white audiences because she did not infuse her fictional works with more overt protests of racial oppression.
Hurston further infuriated critics by responding that contemporary forms of racial protest often struck her as a form of self-pity unworthy of black people. In "How It Feels to Be Colored Me," she vaunts, "I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking in my eyes¿No, I do not weep at the world -- I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife."
Her brash individualism did not win her many allies, and up until her death, much criticism of Hurston's work was often personal in nature, casting aspersion on her boldly unconventional style of living, transient relationships with men, volatile relationships with colleagues, and unpredictable politics. Toward the end of her life, she was increasingly isolated from her former colleagues, and yet she remained undaunted and dedicated to her own iconoclastic pursuits. She died of heart disease in a Florida county welfare home in 1960.
Today she is often seen as having been ahead of her time, a defiant pioneer of pride in southern black culture and a brilliant literary stylist who preserved and celebrated authentic African-American traditions and voices. Her revival was spurred by Alice Walker's rediscovery of Hurston's works in the 1970s, when her books were already out of print. In recent decades, Hurtson has been embraced as a forerunner of black women writers. Hurston's unsparing humor -- once read as a kind of racial denigration -- is now appreciated as politically significant satire and as resistance to white-dominated culture. Her use of multiple voices and double meanings has been celebrated by Henry Louis Gates for creatively "signifying" on African-American culture. Feminists have embraced her assertive heroines, her lyrical affirmations of female sexuality, and her personal strength and individualism.
While many of Hurston's own claims for her work have been vindicated by time and changing understandings of literature and politics, the complexity of her views on race and gender is not to be underestimated.
Major Works
Novels:
- Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934)
- Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
- Moses, Man of the Mountain (1942)
- Seraph on the Sewanee: A Novel (1948)
Anthropological Works and Folklore Collections:
- Mules and Men (1935)
- Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica (1938)
- Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folktales from the Gulf States. Carla Kaplan, ed. (published 2003)
Autobiography:
- Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography (1942)
Dramatic Work:
- Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life (published posthumously, 1991)
Short Stories:
- "Spunk" (1925)
- "Sweat" (1926)
- "The Gilded Six-Bits" (1933)
- "Uncle Monday" (1934)
- "Story in Harlem Slang" (1942)
Essays:
- "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" (1928)
- "My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience" (1944)
- "Crazy for This Democracy" (1945)
- "What White Publishers Won't Publish" (1950)
Chronology
1891
On January 7, born in Notasulga, Alabama, fifth of eight children of John Hurston, a carpenter, sharecropper, and Baptist preacher (later mayor of Eatonville) and Lucy Potts Hurston, a former schoolteacher. When Hurston is 9-10 years old, the family moves to Eatonville, Florida, the first independent, self-governing black community.
1901
The date Hurston frequently claimed as her birth date (January 7, 1901) and inscribed as such by Alice Walker on Hurston's gravestone.
1904
Hurston's mother dies. John Hurston remarries. Financial troubles and familial conflict lead to the dispersal of Hurston and her siblings to the homes of friends and relatives. Attends school when she can while working as a domestic and moving frequently between homes of various relatives.
1915-16
Begins living on her own, traveling as a maid for a singer in a Gilbert and Sullivan touring theater troupe. In the next two years, while earning a high school degree from Morgan Academy in Baltimore, Hurston supports herself with a succession of jobs: live-in maid for a clergyman, nightclub waitress, and manicurist.
1919
Attends Howard University. There Hurston meets Herbert Sheen (whom she will later marry) and philosophy professor Alain Locke who will later publish The New Negro (1925) a defining text of the Harlem Renaissance.
1921
Hurston's first short story, "John Redding Goes to Sea," published in Stylus, Howard University's literary magazine.
1925
Arrives in New York, winning an Opportunity contest for her story "Spunk" and a second place award for her play Color Struck. Both pieces are published in Opportunity. With her fascinating storytelling and bold wit, Hurston quickly becomes a central figure among artists of the Harlem Renaissance forming friendships with Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Carl Van Vechten, Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, and Jean Toomer, among others. She is hired by author Fannie Hurst as a live-in secretary and continues as Hurst's companion and chauffeur.
Receives a scholarship to attend Barnard College. As apprentice to anthropologist Franz Boas, Hurston conducts research in New York City. Publishes "Sweat" in the only issue of Fire! (November 1926), a journal she organizes with Langston Hughes and "John Redding Goes to Sea" in Opportunity.
1927
Sponsored by Boas and Carter G. Woodson's Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, Hurston returns to Florida to collect African-American folklore. During the trip she also studies hoodoo practices.
Marries Hebert Sheen, whom she will divorce in 1931 after a 2-1/2 year separation, choosing her life as a writer and anthropologist over marriage.
1928
Receives B.A. from Barnard College. Is sponsored by a private New York patron, Charlotte Osgood Mason, to travel throughout Lousisana, Florida, and the Bahamas, where Hurston collects folklore and studies hoodoo, becoming apprentice to New Orleans hoodoo doctor Luke Turner. Publishes "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" in World Tomorrow.
1930
Works on the musical play Mule Bone with Langston Hughes, but falls out with Hughes in 1931 over disputed authorship of the play.
1931
Publishes "Hoodoo in America," the results of her second collecting expedition, in Journal of American Folklore.
1932
Writes and stages The Great Day, a theatrical revue featuring authentic African-American song and dance, which she stages in various versions in New York, Florida, and Chicago.
1933
Publishes two short stories: "The Gilded Six-Bits" in Story magazine and "The Fire and the Cloud" in Challenge.
1934
Publishes six essays in Nancy Cunard's Negro: An Anthology. Publishes her first novel, Jonah's Gourd Vine, a fictionalized account off her parents' marriage, which becomes a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Earns a living as a drama instructor at Bethune-Cookman College in Dayton, Florida. Begins suffering from painful intestinal ailments that will continue throughout her life.
1935
Enrolls briefly in Columbia University's Ph.D. program in anthropology. Collects recordings of folk music in the South with Alan Lomax. Works for the WPA Federal Theater Project helping direct and organize the Harlem unit's production of "Walk Together Chillun."
1935
Publishes Mules and Men, a collection of folklore and accounts of her hoodoo studies. Critical reception varies. Considered "not scientific enough" by academia at the time, but well received by the mainstream press. The book -- published during the Scottsboro trial -- is criticized by some as an overly idealized and politically naive depiction of the African-American experience.
1936
Accepts a Guggenheim grant to study folklore in the West Indies. While in Haiti, writes Their Eyes Were Watching God (published 1937) in seven weeks.
1938
Publishes Tell My Horse, a travelogue based on her research in Haiti. More sensationalist than Mules and Men, and including sections on hoodoo's sexual aspects, the book is not a success. Alain Locke calls it "anthropological gossip."
1939
Publishes Moses, Man of the Mountain, a fictionalized, often satirical narrative of the biblical Moses, with analogies to race relations of Hurston's day. Praised by some critics for its inventiveness and scope, the novel was harshly criticized as racial caricature by Ralph Ellison and Alain Locke.
1939
Marries Albert Price. After periods of separation and reconcilement, their divorce is finalized in 1943.
1941
Somewhat reluctantly, Hurston writes her autobiography, which has been solicited by her publisher at Lippincott Press. The publishers ask for revisions and omissions before they consider it publishable.
1941-42
Publishes "Cock Street, Beale Street" in Southern Literary Messenger and "Story in Harlem Slang" in American Mercury. Works as a story consultant at Paramount Studios in Hollywood and lectures at various black colleges. Publishes Dust Tracks on the Road (1942). Critical reception is split along racial lines. Former Harlem Renaissance friends and colleagues accuse Hurston of pandering to white readers, while the autobiography makes Hurston popular with white mainstream audiences, leading to a succession of commissions to write for the Saturday Evening Post, American Mercury, and Reader's Digest (1942-45).
1943
Hurston is publicly quoted as supporting segregation, leading to renewed attacks on her work and politics by fellow African-American writers. In the same year, she receives Howard University's Distinguished Alumni Award and publishes "The Pet Negro Syndrome" in American Mercury.
1944
Publishes "My Most Humliating Jim Crow Experience" in Negro Digest.
1945
Publishes "Crazy for This Democracy" in Negro Digest. The article criticizes the racist underpinnings of U.S. domestic and foreign policies.
1945-48
Suffering from intestinal illness, Hurston nevertheless moves to Honduras, where she writes Seraph of the Sewanee (published 1948), a novel about white southerners. Returns to New York in 1948.
1949
Indicted on charges of molesting a 10-year-old boy, the son of a former landlady in Harlem. Although the charges are dismissed as clearly fraudulent, the media coverage is devastating. In a letter to Carl Van Vechten Hurston writes, "My country has failed me utterly. My race has seen fit to destroy me without reason, and with the vilest tools conceived of by man so far."
1950
Working as a maid in Florida, Hurston publishes "What White Publishers Won't Print" in Negro Digest. She is briefly "rediscovered" by the media, who sensationalize her story.
1951-56
Living in poverty in various towns in Florida, Hurston continues to publish occasional magazine pieces, inluding a letter to the Orlando Sentinel (August 22, 1955) criticizing the 1954 Supreme Court ruling against segregation. She is called a traitor by civil rights leaders. Undeterred by painful intestinal illness and unsuccessful attempts to interest publishers in her work, Hurston nevertheless devotes herself to writing a biography of Herod the Great.
1956
Receives an award for education and human relations from Bethune-Cookman College.
1957-59
Writes "Hoodoo and Black Magic," a column for the Fort Pierce Chronicle.
1959
Suffers a stroke. Disabled, impoverished, and refusing to contact family or friends for financial support, Hurston is made to enter Saint Lucie County Welfare Home in October, 1959.
1960
Hurston dies of heart disease in the county welfare home on January 28. The community of Fort Pierce takes up a collection for her burial, but there is no money for a gravestone.
1973
Alice Walker travels to Florida to provide a marker for Hurston's grave. On it, she has inscribed: "Zora Neale Hurston: A Genius of the South," Novelist, Folklorist, Anthropologist, 1901-1960.
 Zora Neale Hurston
1975
Walker publishes "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston" in Ms. magazine, leading to renewed attention to Hurston as an author and a forebearer of African-American woman writers.
1977
Robert Hemenway publishes the first full-scale biography of Hurston.
1979
Walker publishes I Love Myself When I Am Laughing...And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive, a collection of Hurston's writings.
1980-90s
Walker's attention to Hurston leads to a widespread resuscitation of her literary works by writers and academics. Among these, feminist and African-American scholars, including Henry Louis Gates, spur reevaluations of her politics and new appreciation of her achievements in the use of voice, poetic style, and folk speech, establishing her place in the canon of twentieth-century American writers. The 1990s witness the re-publication of her major works and new collections of her lesser-known writings.
Henry Louis Gates
2000-03
Hurston continues to ascend as a literary figure. Carla Kaplan publishes the third volume of Hurston's collected folklore and a volume of her letters. Valerie Boyd brings out a new biography in 2003.
Karen Vrotsos has taught literature and writing at Columbia College and Barnard College, and is a doctoral candidate in English literature at Columbia University, where she also manages the Charles H. Revson Fellows Program on the Future of the City of New York. She is co-author of There's No Business That's Not Show Business (with Bernd Schmitt and David L. Rogers; Prentice Hall, 2003). She lives with her son and husband in New York City, and in her spare time is creative consultant for Jumbie Records and for the jazz band Imaginary Homeland.
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