Zora Neale Hurston
Who wrote one of my five most favourite books,
Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Their Eyes Were Watching God has been called "a classic of black literature, one of the best novels of the period."
Born on January 7, 1891 in the town of Notasulga, Alabama. The fifth of eight children, her father; John, was a carpenter, sharecropper, and a Baptist preacher, her mother; Lucy, a former schoolteacher. The family moved to Eatonville, Florida; a town which held historical significance as the first incorporated Black municipality in the United States.
At fourteen Hurston left Eatonville, working as a maid for whites but refusing to act humble or to accept sexual advances from male employers; consequently, she never stayed at one job long. Hired as a wardrobe girl with a Gilbert and Sullivan repertory company, she traveled around the South for eighteen months, always reading in hopes of completing her education.
She spent nearly four years at Howard University, but graduated with only a two-year Associates degree. However, during this time, Hurston published her first stories. The early 1920s marked the beginning of Zora Neale Hurston's career as an author.
From the 30s through to the 60s, Hurston was the most prolific and accomplished black woman writer in America. She published seven books, many short stories, magazine articles, and plays, and she gained a reputation as an outstanding folklorist and novelist.
She called attention to herself because she insisted upon being herself at a time when blacks were being urged to assimilate in an effort to promote better relations between the races. Hurston, however, saw nothing wrong with being black: "I do not belong to that sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal."
Indeed she felt there was something so special about her blackness that others could benefit just by being around her. Her works, then, may be seen as manifestos of selfhood, as affirmations of blackness and the positive aspects of black life.
The 30s and early 40s 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.
After a slew of unsuccessful career changes (including newspaper journalist, librarian, and substitute teacher), Hurston became a broken, penniless recluse. She suffered a fatal stroke in 1959 and was buried in an unmarked grave in Fort Pierce, Florida.
"If yuh kin see de light at daybreak, you don't keer if you die at dusk. It's so many people never seen de light at all. Ah wuz fumblin' round and God opened de door."
"Love is lak de sea. It's uh movin' thing, but still and all, it takes it's shape from de shore it meets, and it's different with every shore."
"Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see."
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