| Name: |
Zora Neale Hurston |
| Birth Date: |
|
| Death Date: |
|
| Place of Birth: |
|
| Place of Death: |
|
| Nationality: |
|
| Ethnicity: |
|
| Gender: |
|
| Occupations: |
|
From the 1930s through the 1960s, Zora Neale Hurston was the most prolific and accomplished black woman writer in America. During that thirtyyear period 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.
Hurston wrote in her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), that she "heard tell" she was born on 7 January 1903 in Eatonville, Florida, the fifth of eight children.
This is a free page. This page contains 151 words. This
biography contains 8,143 words (approx. 27 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Zora Neale Hurston Access Pass.
