Hurston, Zora Neale. (1901 - 1960).
L i f e
- born in Eatonville = the 1st Afro-American community attempting an organised self-government > the setting of her Their Eyes Were Watching God
- daughter of travelling preacher > full of anecdotes, humorous tales, and tragicomic stories heard in her childhood
- a flamboyant and charismatic figure, played a major role in the Harlem Renaissance
W o r k
- an anthropologist, folklorist, and fiction writer
- concern: the move of people from the country to the city, and the strength and wisdom they carry with them in the form of folkways, stories, and music
- point of view: so distinctly her own that she seldom pleased anyone entirely, and sometimes no one at all
x but: presented the ‘black people as complete, complex, undiminished human beings’ => this point of view was absent as yet in Afro-American literature
Mules & Men (1935):
- a series of anthropological stories of voodoo among the Afro-Americans
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937):
- a love story set in the Eatonville community
Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939):
- a re-creation and reinterpretation of the Old Testament Hebrews as characters of Negro folktales
Dust Tracks on the Road (1942):
- her autobiography, probably her finest novel
Quote
"Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company"?
From "How It Feels to Be Colored Me".
Basics
(Photo: Carl Van Vechten. 1938. Source: Wikipedia).
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Author
Zora Neale Hurston. (1901 - 1960). African-American. -
Work
Novelist. Short story writer. Anthropologist. Folklorist. Writer of the Harlem Renaissance. -
Genre
Afro-American topics.
Literature
Baym, Nina, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1995.
Bercovitch, Sacvan, ed. The Cambridge History of American Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Cunliffe, Marcus. The Literature of the United States. London: Penguin, 1991.
Lauter, Paul, ed. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1994.
McQuade, Donald, gen.ed. The Harper American Literature. New York: Harper & Collins, 1996.
Ruland, Richard, Malcolm Bradbury. Od puritanismu k postmodernismu. Praha: Mladá fronta, 1997.
Vančura, Zdeněk, ed. Slovník spisovatelů: Spojené státy americké. Praha: Odeon, 1979.