On January 7, 1891, Zora Neale Hurston was born in the tiny town of Notasulga, Alabama. She was the fifth of eight children in the Hurston household. Her father John was a carpenter, sharecropper, and a Baptist preacher; and her mother Lucy, a former schoolteacher. Within a year of Zora's birth, the family moved to Eatonville, Florida; a town, which held historical significance as the first, incorporated Black municipality in the United States. In 1904, thirteen-year-old Zora was devastated by the death of her mother. Later that same year, her unaffectionate father removed her from school and sent her to care for her brother's children. A rambunctious and restless teenager, Zora was eager to leave the responsibility of that household. …show more content…
In 1925, Hurston headed to New York, just as the Harlem Renaissance was at its crest. She enrolled in Barnard College to study under Franz Boas, the father of anthropology. While there, Hurston married an old Howard boyfriend named Herbert Sheen, but the marriage was short-lived. After graduation, Zora returned to her hometown of Eatonville to collect folklore as material for her blossoming writing career. The late 1920's marked a resurgence of her literary muse as Hurston published several works, and consequently gained financial sponsorship from wealthy New York patrons. The 1930's and early 1940's marked the peak of Hurston's literary career. It was during this time that she completed graduate work at Columbia, published four novels and an autobiography, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her writing brought her to the Caribbean where she became so intrigued by the practice of voodoo that she began incorporating these supernatural elements into her novels and stories. Although her work was receiving increasing acclaim from the white literati of New York, Zora often felt under attack from many members of the Black Arts Movement. She termed these detractors, members of the "niggerati", for being close-minded in their criticism of her racial politics. By the mid-1940s Hurston's writing career was faltering. At one point she was arrested and
Hurston stays who she is, no matter what people might think of her. In her non-fiction text she especially manages to convey this by using Humor, that creates Ethos within the text. The first words of “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” include “I am the only Negro in the Unites States whose grandfather on the mother’s side was not an Indian chief”, in which Hurston makes fun of all the Afro-Americans at the time who were trying to claim Native American heritage. This start into the text creates a lighthearted atmosphere, in which the author acknowledges her less than perfect living circumstances, but showing that she will not crumple beneath them. Before being sent to a racially mixed boarding school in Jacksonville, Zora Hurston lived in a town in Florida. She always welcomed white tourists looking at their town and states that she was “the first welcome-to-our state Floridian”, hoping “the Miami Chamber of Commerce will please take notice”. Of course, at the time, it was impossible to involve the government in a personal wit, so the author uses the sarcastic information to show the reader that she would live her life no matter what the social norms might have been in the 1920s. In the second half of her text, Hurston includes the Irony “How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me”, showing that she knows that some people would view her as being socially unacceptable, however Hurston does not care, as long as she can stay true to her own character. Through the humorous tone created, the reader acknowledges that Hurston is light hearted and sympathizes with her
Zora Neal Hurston was criticized by other African American writers for her use of dialect and folk speech. Richard Wright was one of her harshest critics and likened Hurston’s technique “to that of a minstrel show designed to appease a white audience” (www.pbs.org).Given the time frame, the Harlem Renaissance, it is understandable that Zora Neale Hurston may be criticized. The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement which redefined how America, and the world, viewed African Americans, so her folk speech could be seen as perpetuating main stream society’s view of African Americans as ignorant and incapable of speaking in complete sentences. However, others, such as philosopher and critic Alain Locke, praised her. He considered Hurston’s “gift for poetic phrase and rare dialect, a welcome replacement for so much faulty local color fiction about Negroes” (www.pbs.org).
Instead, she portrays him as being racially whole and emotionally healthy. Hurston didn't want to change the world based on racial movements, she had her own ideas about things. Capturing the essence of Black womanhood was more important to her than social criticism.
Zora Neale Hurston was born in 1901. She was raised in Eatonville, Florida. Zora went to Howard University and progressed on to Barnard College. Zora’s work reflected the use of African American legends in her short stories. Zora Hurston is a vital figure who composed stories and plays during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s. She was committed to telling the stories of many cultures to allocate their social legacy with deference and love with an end goal to beat the unrefined stereotyping of the period. In 1925 during the Harlem Renaissance, Zora wrote a story called “Spunk”. In the story “Spunk”, Zora used the literary terms like character, setting, and
Her race of people thought her work was "no good" and an embarrassment to white people because of her choice of words. Unlike Maya Tyler and Janie, Hurston never knew what it would be like to overcome the negativity and true gender role beliefs. She died in poverty and without a single belief she would be recognized
Zora Neale Hurston was born on January 7, 1891 (Bio). Her occupation is being an author of the Civil Rights Activist (Bio). Writer and anthropologist, she was born in Notasulga, Alabama (Gates 425). Her place of birth was in Notasulga, Alabama (Bio). She grew up in Eatonville, Florida, where her father, a Baptist preacher, was also the town’s mayor (Ashby & Ohrn 220). She grew up uneducated and poor but she was educated with black folklore (“Zora Neale Hurston”).
Zora Neale Hurston was born January 7, 1891 in a small town known as Notasulga, Alabama. She was born the fifth child of eight children to John and Lucy. Lucy, her mother, was an old schoolteacher and John, her father, was a Baptist preacher. Zora’s family relocated to Eatonville, Florida when she was just a young girl. When she was thirteen, her mother died in 1904. That same year, her father took her out of school to raise her brothers. At the age of sixteen, Zora was eager to escape the responsibility of looking after her brothers and became a member of a traveling theater. Afterward, she started doing labor work in a Caucasian household.
She was not able to differentiate the two until she moved to Jacksonville. Hurston states, “ I was not Zora of Orange County anymore. I was now a little colored girl”(Hurston 417). Now being outside her town of Eatonville, she began to experience what it was like to be colored. When Hurston moved to Jacksonville she noticed that not only where the skin color different, but also everything else about Jacksonville.
Zora Neale Hurston was so proud to be from the black community that she mentioned it in her writings; she even changed it to her birthplace. Eatonville, Florida, had a massive impact on Zora’s life. It shaped her life and writing style. Hurston explains: "Anyway, the force from somewhere in Space which commands you to write in the first place, gives you no choice. You take up the pen when you are told, and write what is commanded. There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you."
Zora Neale Hurston, known as one of the most symbolic African American women during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930’s. Hurston was known as a non fiction writer, anthropologist and folklorist. Hurston’s literature has served as a big eye opener during the Harlem Renaissance, celebrating black dialect and their traditions. Most of her published stories “depict relationships among black residents in her native southern Florida, was largely unconcerned with racial injustices” (Bomarito 89). Hurston was unique when it came to her racial point of views, promoting white racism instead of black racism. Even though her works had been forgotten by the time of her death, now her literature has left a bigger impact to future literature
One of Hurston’s stories, How it Feels to Be Colored Me, reflects the author’s perspective of the colored race (specifically herself). According to the story, when Hurston reached the age of thirteen, she truly “became colored” (1040). The protagonist was raised in Eatonville, Florida, which was mainly inhabited by the colored race. She noted no difference between herself and the white community except that they never lived in her hometown. Nevertheless, upon leaving Eatonville, the protagonist began losing her identity as “Zora,” instead, she was recognized as only being “a little colored girl” (1041). Hurston’s nickname “Zora” represents her individuality and significance; whereas, the name “a little colored girl” was created by a white society to belittle her race and gender (1041).
Zora Neale Hurston was born January 7, 1891 in Eatonville, Florida, the fifth of eight children to Reverend John Hurston and Lucy Potts Hurston. Zora was extraordinary person. When her mother
Zora Neale Hurston was born and raised in Eatonville, Florida which was the first all-black town in the United States to be incorporated and self-governed. Due to Hurston growing up in an all-black community, she was protected from racism. She states that the only white people she knew were the ones passing through the town going to or coming from Orlando. When she moved from the town of Eatonville to Jacksonville, she was introduced to a different lifestyle where she was
Zora Neale Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama on January 7, 1891. Her father, John Hurston, was a minister and he had several years as a mayor for that town. Her mother, Lucy Hurston, seemed to only have her family as any worries. Her childhood seemed to be perfect, it was free from racism and poverty (Zora 1). Although, everything changed when her mother passed away and his father remarried and soon was sent to boarding school. She was then expelled a while after her father stopped paying for tuition so she worked in a theatrical company as a maid (Zora 1). Quitting that job, at
Some time passed, she turned up in Baltimore where she lied about her age to finish high school. After which she enrolled in Howard University in 1920 where earned an associate’s degree. She then transferred to Barnard College and after graduating in 1928, she started coursework for a PHD in Anthropology at Columbia University. Some years later, she moved to Harlem deep in the middle of the Harlem Renaissance, where she became a fixture in its thriving art scene along with friends, Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen who she was known to be acquainted with. She wrote several short stories and plays, such as “Mules and Men”, “The Great Day”, “From Sun to Sun” and “Mule Bone”. She also a few novels, two highly regarded works of anthropology and an autobiography titled, “Dust Tracks on a Road”, which has had some controversy on whether some parts of her life’s story in truly accurate. One example would be that she claimed to have written “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, in seven weeks “under internal pressure” while on a Guggenheim fellowship to Haiti to study the folklore. Hurston struggled through the last years of her life, as she continued to write but