Author Biography

Zora Neale Hurston

By Peter Olson

Zora Neale Hurston was a very important figure in early 1900’s for many reasons. She was an accomplished writer, an outspoken woman, and a driven individual. These attributes collectively came together to form a woman who created a name, whether good or bad, for herself. Her life was filled with ups and downs that reached both extremes of the spectrum, and they ended up playing a very important role in her pieces of literature.

Overhead image of Eatonville in 1954

She was born on January 7, 1891 in the small town of Notsulga, Alabama to a Baptist preacher and a school teacher. After a while the family moved to Eatonville, Florida where she later called it her true home; it was a place where she felt the most comfortable. A good reason to why she felt this way was because it was a separate community from all of the other whites in the area. This situation can be clearly seen in her novel Their Eyes Were on God, which describes a middle aged woman in an all-black community that was named Eatonville as well. There are many other similarities from her life that are found in that same book as well, such as both characters, Zora and Janie, being married multiple times and being on trial for a crime that was not actually committed. She put her life into the books that she wrote.

Howard University around the 1920's

To get to her writing career though, she first went to Howard University which ended up being a great influence on her life. She graduated in 4 years with a 2 year Associates degree. It is said that one reason why it took her an extended amount of time to finish her degree was because she spent a lot of her time writing and not doing schoolwork. After Howard came further education at Barnard College and later at Columbia University. Once her schooling was done she decided to get married, but it ended up not working out and only lasting 4 years. She tried to give marriage another chance 8 years later but this one also did not work out. She then decided to continue her career in writing and travelling to different parts of the world, hoping that the environment would help influence the writing. She was greatly influenced by these cultures and was said to have partaken in such activities as voodoo and various other supernatural practices. Her life understandably took a turn for the worse and she was later accused of molesting a 10 year-old boy, but was later found not guilty. After these trials and heartaches she moved back to Florida and lived there until 1959 when she had a stroke that ended up taking her life.

Her work in literature is nothing short of spectacular and she is considered to be one of the most dominant African-American writers from the 20^th century. Her works have been very influential ever since they were revived in the late 1900’s. Since then, they have been studied and scrutinized all the more, but with all of the comprehensive analyses that has been done more information about Hurston’s life has been revealed. She is surely one of the most interesting writers of the 20^th century.