biography
| name: |
Hurston, Zora (Neale)
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| sex:
| female
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| lived:
| (1903–60)
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| biography:
| Writer, anthropologist, and folklorist, born in Eatonville, Florida, USA. She studied at Howard University (1923–4), Barnard College (1928 BA), and did graduate work at Columbia University. She spent much of her life collecting folklore of the South (1927–31, 1938–9) and of other places such as Haiti (1937–8), Bermuda (1937–8), and Honduras (1946–8), publishing her findings in works including Mules and Men (1935). She lived in New York City and held a variety of jobs, such as teacher, librarian, and assistant to Fannie Hurst. She was associated with the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, and would later influence such writers as Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison. She is best known for Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), a novel celebrating the lives of African-Americans. In 1950 she moved to Florida and became increasingly conservative and alienated from her fellow African-Americans, taking a stand even against school integration. She died in poverty and was all but forgotten, but by the 1970s her works were being rediscovered and recognized for their insights. |
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