Zora Neale Hurston

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Zora Neale Hurston

• Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity
  to jump at de sun. We might not land on the
  sun, but at least we would get off the ground.
• - Zora Neale Hurston

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Childhood

• Born January 7, 1891 in Notasulga, AL (some say
  1901)
• Moved to Eatonville, FL in 1892
• Mother dies in 1904
• Father remarries a woman only six years older
  than Zora

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Missing Years

• 10 year span that stumps scholars.

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Education

• 1917- Zora is twenty-six. She claims her birth
  year was 1901 in order to enroll in high school.
  
• 1918- She graduates
• 1920- She receives an associates degree from
  Howard University.
• 1925- She begins at Barnard College.

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Thats Interesting

• She was very close to Langston Hughes.

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More Fun Facts

• She studied Anthropology at Barnard College and
  was hired to study the African-American culture
  in Florida. This was funded by the Federal
  Writers Project.

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Haiti and the Bahamas

• Zora made trips to these islands in search of
  their folklore. Her focus was on voodoo and the
  presence of zombies.

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Haiti contd

• While in Haiti, Zora wrote Their Eyes were
  Watching God, her most famous novel.

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Something for Everyone

• Zoras folklore gatherings led to the publication
  of several childrens books.

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Death

• After all her accomplishments, Zora died in
  obscurity in Fort Pierce, FL in 1960.

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Rebirth

• 1973- Alice Walker locates the site of her grave
  and purchases a headstone for it. The inscription
  reads "Zora Neale Hurston A Genius of the
  South."

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• "Confident to the point of conceit, she was by
  most accounts a flamboyant, infinitely inventive
  chameleon of a woman, who could make herself
  equally at home among the Haitian voodoo doctors
  who informed her research and the Park Avenue
  patrons who financed it. She was a lightning rod
  of contradiction and controversy. A devoted
  daughter of the rural South. Ann duCille,
  "Looking for Zora"

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