About the Author: Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston

1. Zora Neale Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama in 1891.
2. Hurston grew up in Eatonville, Florida -- the first incorporated all-black town in the US -- and returned there after college to do a field study in anthropology that influenced her writings.
3. She attended Howard University, Barnard College, and Columbia University where she was taught by anthropologist Franz Boas.
4. She was interested in and collected folklor of Jamaica, Haiti, Bermda, and Honduras. Some of her folklore and folk custom collections are Tell My Horse and Mules and Men.
5. Many of her writings addressed issues such as race and gender and related them to searching for freedom.
6. Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937, is Zora Neale Hurston's best-known novel.
7. She was a prolific writer and some of her other fiction and nonfiction works include Jonah's Gourd Vine, Seraph on the Suwanee, Dust Tracks on a Road, and some short stories, plays, and journal articles.
8. Though the subjects of her writing were not political, Hurston's work created conflict in the black community because of her "...character's use of dialect, her manner of portraying black culture, and her conservatism..."
9. Hurston is noted for her, "...metaphorical language, story-telling abilities, and interest in and celebraiton of Southern black culture in the United States."
10. Zora Neale Hurston died of several health problems in 1960 impoverished and without recognition from the literary community.
11. However, in the 1970s, her works were rediscovered and republished by a new generation of black writers and she went on to inspire great authors including Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison.

Sources:

Zora Neale Hurston Picture: http://www.literaryhistory.com/20thC/Hurston.htm

Their Eyes Were Watching God Picture: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37415.Their_Eyes_Were_Watching_God

Information: "Zora Neale Hurston." Microsoft® Student 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008.

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