Hurston, Zora Neale

Hurston, Zora Neale (1901?–60), born in Florida, after graduation from Barnard continued her study of anthropology, as evidenced in Tell My Horse (1938), about her research into folkways of Haiti and the West Indies; and Mules and Men (1935), stories of voodoo among blacks of the South. Her novels include Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), about a black preacher's loves, and Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), her masterpiece. It celebrates the self‐liberation of Janie, a girl who dreams of a life redolent and symbolic of pear‐tree blossoms. She goes through two marriages with domineering men. Janie publicly humiliates and leaves the first husband and suffers the second one for years until she meets her true love, Teacake, a gambler and migrant crop‐picker, with whom she gladly works in the fields of Florida but kills in self‐defense when he is mad with rabies. At her trial, the black community of men try to convict her of murder, but a white doctor and sheriff who were witness to Teacake's sickness testify for her and she is acquitted. The novel brilliantly explores the themes of male oppression and female autonomy. It has become a key feminist text. Moses: Man of the Mountain (1939) is a black folk interpretation of Biblical Jews, and Seraph on the Suwanee (1948) describes the marrying and civilizing of a Florida cracker woman. Dust Tracks on a Road (1942) is her autobiography. She taught at North Carolina College for Negroes. An anthology of her writings was edited by Alice Walker (1979), and Spunk (1985) collects stories.