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I have never read Zora Neale Hurston. This grievous oversight will be corrected this year. She was never on the curriculum in my high school or college, neither required nor recommended reading. I have read about her, in learning more about the Harlem Renaissance and her friend Langston Hughes. The omission from the literary canon I was exposed to is intriguing because it seems she was a conservative, against integration, and critical of the civil rights movement. That’s exactly the type of Black woman author one would expect the White establishment to approve of. I’ll see for myself when I have the opportunity to explore her work.
Zora Neale Hurston was a Black writer, folklorist, and anthropologist, best known for her novels and short stories that explored the lives and experiences of Black Americans in the early 20th century. Born in Alabama in 1891, Hurston was the fifth of eight children in a family of former slaves. She was raised in Eatonville, Florida, the first all-black incorporated town in the United States, and later attended Howard University and Barnard College, where she studied anthropology.
Hurston's most famous work is her 1937 novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God," which tells the story of Janie Crawford, a young Black woman living in the South who embarks on a journey of self-discovery and empowerment. The novel was groundbreaking in its portrayal of a Black woman as a fully realized and complex character and has become a classic of American literature.
In addition to her novels, Hurston was also a prolific writer of short stories, essays, and plays, and was a pioneering folklorist and anthropologist. She conducted fieldwork in the American South and the Caribbean collecting and recording stories, songs, and traditions that were often overlooked by mainstream researchers. Hurston's work helped to document and preserve the cultural traditions of Black Americans and has had a lasting impact on the field of anthropology.