10 GROUNDCOVER NEWS LITERARY ARTS Rediscovering Zora Neale Hurston’s literary achievements The story of Zora Neale Hurston represents the third volume of our attempts to bring to our readers the narrative of early Black writers and artists who have left their monumental footprints on the “sands of time.” A few things are notable about Zora Neale Hurston, author of “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” First, Hurston and some of the other early Black writers and aritsts were once famous for their writing, and subsequently, they were forgotten. Second, Zora Neale Hurston’s work and contribution to the canon of Black literary tradition had to be rediscovered by newer generations of African American writers. Third, Hurston lived through poverty and died in a Florida welfare home for the elderly poor. There was no gravestone on her gravesite. In 1973, Writer Alice Walker traveled to Florida to see where she was buried. She discovered that she was put in an unmarked grave. Walker quickly arranged to have a stone marker installed. It said, “ZORA NEALE HURSTON: GENIUS OF THE SOUTH.” It is fair to single out Walker and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., as people who played significant roles in the rediscovery of Zora Neale Hurston. Many writers in the literary community credit Alice Walker for her 1975 article titled, “Where is Zora Neale Hurston?” This question got many answers, including a 1979 article by Henry Louis Gates Jr. which lauded Hurston’s literary and scholarly achievements. Professor Gates pointed out that her distinctive style of writing should not be condemned, but celebrated as a cultural and historical aesthetic. More recently, a went to a high school at Morgan College in Baltimore. Subsequently, she entered Howard University in Washington D.C., where she studied writing, Latin, Greek and public speaking. After two years, she received an Associate Degree. Barnard College offered her a scholWILL SHAKESPEARE Groundcover vendor No. 258 2022 book titled, “Zora Neale Hurston: You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays” was edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Genevieve West. In one review of Hurston’s “Dust Tracks on a Road,” Gates said, “How was Hurston — the recipient of two Guggenheim fellowships and the author of four novels, a dozen short essays, two musicals, two books on Black mythology, dozens of essays and a prize-winning author biography — lost from all but her most loyal followers for two full decades?” Gates continued, “There is no easy answer to this question. It is clear however, that the enthusiastic responses that Hurston’s work engenders today were not shared by several of her black male contemporaries.” Does it go back to this thought? Zora Neale Hurston (18911960) Zora Neale Hurston was born in Alabama in January 1891. She died in January 1960. When she was three years old, her family moved to Florida. She was raised in a predominantly Black town in Florida called Eatonville. She arship to study anthropology at their New York City campus. She accepted. She had an opportunity to learn from the distinguished cultural anthropologist, Franz Boas, and the well-known anthropologist Margaret Mead was one of her classmates. Hurston received her B.A. in Anthropology in 1925 at the age of 28. She continued her education at Columbia University graduate school. Boas, her research adviser, helped her secure several research grants and fellowships. During her stay at Barnard College and Columbia University, Hurston lived in a Harlem apartment which became a meeting place for young poets and writers such as Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Bennett and Countee Cullen. They were able to get dozens of poems and stories published in “Fire” and “Opportunity” magazines during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. Zora Neale Hurston’s stories and Langston Hughes’s poems appeared in the iconic anthology book of Alain Locke titled, “The New Negro.” Hurston wrote four books and more than 50 stories. She traveled to Jamaica and Haiti to do folklore anthropological research. Many of her research materials are now being dug up and published posthumously. Hurston’s 1927 interview of Cudjo Lewis who was in the last ship that brought African slaves to the shores of Mobile, Alabama, was finally published posthumously in 2018. The highly acclaimed book is called, “The Barracoon” (more below). Of all the great books written by Zora Neale Hurston, the greatest is, “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Newer editions have been republished by the University of Illinois Press. The Illinois Press also published new editions of Robert Hemingway’s “Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography” and Jennifer L. Freeman’s “Ain’t I an Anthropologist?” - Conclusion Professor Gates called out the three main critics of Zora Neale Hurston’s body of work. They were Richard Wright, Sterling A. Brown and Ralph Ellison. Their reviews of Hurston’s writings during the 1930s through the 1950s were brutal. The attacks on Hurston’s writing style and literary perspectives were merciless. The harsh reviews probably forced Hurston to hide away. About the harsh criticism, Henry Louis Gates said, “In reviews of ‘Mules and Men’ (1935), ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ (1937) and ‘Moses: Man of the Mountain’ (1939), Sterling A. Brown, Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison condemned her work as “socially unconscious” and derided her “minstrel technique” in ‘Moses.’ Ellison concluded, ‘For Negro fiction, it did nothing.’” Gates continued, “Hurston’s mythic realism, lush and dense with a lyrical black idiom, was regarded as counter revolutionary by the proponents of social realism …” Hurston competed with her Black male contemporaries “for the right to determine the ideal fictional mode for representing Negro life.” Gates also made one final prophetic remark about the controversy. He said, “She lost the battle, but may yet win the war.” Alice Walker, who won the Pulitzer Prize for “The Color Purple,” helped to get Zora Neale Hurston’s unpublished manuscript published. The manuscript was based on a 1927 interview of the last surviving slave who was brought to the port of Mobile, Alabama in 1865. Hurston interviewed 87-year old Cudjo Lewis in Afrika Town, near Mobile, Alabama in 1927. Lewis answered Hurston’s questions in a unique Black Southern vernacular and folklore English language reminiscent of the 19th century style by Black Poet Paul Lawrence Dunber. It was and it is still called, “Black English.” The book, by Hurston titled, “Barracoon: The Story of the last Black Cargo” was published in 2018. It received great reviews from the New York Times, Time Magazine, PBS, etc. Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison said, “One of the greatest writers of our time.” Alice Walker said, “Zora Neale Hurston’s genius has once again produced a masterpiece.” Finally the world knows that Hurston has inspired many writers to use their inner courage to write and, of course, share their private feelings in public places. That is what poets and fiction/non-fiction writers do. Zora Neale Hurston’s legacy and impacts are staggering. Several award-winning writers including Walker, Morrison and Maya Angelou give effusive gratitude to Miss Hurston for their writing success, fame and recognition. MAY 17, 2024
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