Transcript Zora Neale Hurston - University of Richmond

Zora Neale
Picture for US Postal Stamp, 2003
Hurston
Early Life
• 1891 – 1960
• I “grew like a gourd
and yelled bass like a gator.”
• Notasulga, Alabama
• Eatonville, Florida
• Father: carpenter, preacher, mayor
• Mother: died 1904 “jump at the sun.”
Out in the World
• At 13: taken out of school
• At 16: traveling theater company
Education and Career
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Howard University (1920)
Harlem Renaissance
1927: founded Fire!
Barnard College
Columbia University
Anthropology and Folklore
Teacher, librarian, and domestic
Work for Benefactor
• Mrs. R. Osgood Mason of Park Ave. New
York
• Monthly allowance for 5 years
to collect folklore of the South
• Criticized for flattering letters
Other Works
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Jonah’s Gourd Vine, 1934 [1991]
Mules and Men, 1935
Their Eyes Were Watching God 1937
Tell My Horse, 1938
Moses, Man of the Mountain, 1939
Dust Tracks on a Road, 1942
Seraph on the Suwanee, 1948
Early Critical Reception of
Their Eyes Were Watching God
• Sterling Brown: It does not “depict
the harsher side of black life in the
South”
• Richard Wright: It “carries no theme,
no message, no thought,” but is like a
minstrel show.
• Benjamin Brawley: “Her interest . . .
Is not in solving problems, the chief
concern being with individuals.”
Richard Wright
Affirmative View of
African American Culture
• But I am not tragically colored.
There is no great sorrow damned up
in my soul, nor lurking behind my
eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not
belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that
nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and
whose feelings are hurt about it. . . . No, I do not weep at
the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.
--“How It Feels to Be Colored Me”
• Politically conservative in 1950s.
• Opposed 1954 Supreme Court desegregation decision
Last Years
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Arrested in 1948
Solitary retirement in Florida
Died in a welfare home
Buried in an unmarked grave
• A Genius of the South: 1901 [sic]---1960.
Novelist, Folklorist, Anthropologist
Current Critical Issues
• Alice Walker: “There is no book
more important to me.”
• Female bonding  self-definition
• Questions about “voice”
• Role of folklore: magic of 3’s,
tale of courtly love, symbols
that aid in retelling
Bibliography
Crabtree, Claire. “The Confluence of Folklore, Feminism and Black Self-Determination in Zora Neale
Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.” The Southern Literary Journal, 17:2 (54-66)
Jordan, Jennifer. “Feminist Fantasies: Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Tulsa
Studies in Women&apos’s Literature. 7:1 (105-17).
Saunders, James Robert. “Womanism as the Key to Understanding Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were
Watching God and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.” The Hollins Critic. 25:4 (1-11).
Washington, Mary Helen. Foreword. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. New York:
Perennial Classics, 1998.
----------. Introduction. I Love Myself When I Am Laughing. Alice Walker, Ed. New York: The Feminist
Press, 1979.
Zora Neale Hurston. Biography. Contemporary Literary Criticism. Literature Resource Center, January
2003. <http://www.galenet.com>
Images:
http://www.americanplacetheatre.org/stage/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=47&Itemid=5
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http://www.loc.gov/wiseguide/jan04/zora.html
http://www.nndb.com/people/237/000084982/
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/Grand-Jean/Hurston/Chapters/patron.html