The queen of the Harlem renaissance (who we nearly forgot)

By Hannah Ruth Andrews

Zora Neale Hurston is a name that is now familiar to anyone with even a passing interest in American literature. Her most popular novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is almost unanimously considered to be essential reading and appears in curricula alongside classics such as The Great Gatsby and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Yet, Hurston was almost lost to obscurity. 

Hurston grew up in the American south at the turn of the nineteenth century. Her father was a Baptist preacher and minister of one of the largest churches in her hometown of Eatonville, Florida. Eatonville was a freedmen’s town, meaning it was an all-Black municipality which had been formed by freed slaves. These towns were self-governing and the townspeople often started schools within which both children and adults alike could be educated. Education would prove to be a key part of Hurston’s own life.

At the age of twenty-seven Hurston began her studies at Howard University and was the first member of her family to attend university. After earning her associate degree at Howard, she was awarded a scholarship to study at Columbia University’s prestigious Bernard College which was an all-women college. Hurston was the first African American woman ever admitted. 

Their Eyes Were Watching God, is almost unanimously considered to be essential reading and appears in curricula alongside classics such as The Great Gatsby and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Throughout her education Hurston pursued her own literary ambitions. At Howard University she and others had founded The Hilltop, a student newspaper. Even before this she had become a member of Adrian Locke’s literary club. Locke was called the “Dean” of the Harlem Renaissance and this early connection to the artistic movement foreshadowed her further involvement in New York. Whilst attending Bernard Hurston co-founded the literary magazine Fire!! with Langston Hughes and Richard Bruce Nugent. The magazine published work from many up-and-coming writers and artists of the Harlem Renaissance, but its radical nature also made it the subject of critique as the magazine openly depicted taboo subjects such homosexuality. 

While spreading her literary wings Hurston was also engaging in her other passion: anthropology. She had received her B.A. in anthropology from Bernard College where she had conducted research with the famed Franz Boas, the father of modern anthropology. As a graduate student she continued to study alongside him. Boas is notable for his contribution of cultural relativism within anthropology, the notion that cultures should not be compared to one another but understood in their own terms. Hurston would utilise this concept in her own work and would use her training under Boas to inform her own depictions of the lives of various Black communities. 

While spreading her literary wings Hurston was also engaging in her other passion: anthropology

In fact, it was whilst conducting fieldwork in Haiti that Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God. The fact that her famous depiction of life in America as a Black woman was written while far away is not a mere coincidence. It is Hurston’s constant concern and connection with various cultural contexts that allows for the palpable humanity within her novels. Hurston not only understood the complexities of these differing human experiences but was also able to depict them in her writing.  Despite the pure artistry of her work Hurston received very little acclaim in her lifetime. Their Eyes Were Watching God received criticism from white critics but also from Black male writers who believed that the book did not have an obvious political stance. Fellow author Richard Wight even accused Hurston of not addressing her novel to her Black audience but rather to ‘a white audience whose chauvinistic tastes she knows how to satisfy.’ 

Hurston died in poverty after enduring medical and monetary issues. She was buried in an unmarked grave, and her work was forgotten for years. It was only through the efforts of another great African American writer, Alice Walker, that Hurston was rediscovered. After reading her novels Walker wrote an essay originally titled ‘In Search of Zora Neale Hurston’ which was published by Ms. magazine in 1975 which pushed Hurston back into the public consciousness and ultimately led to the reprinting of much of her writing. Walker also bought a headstone for Hurston’s unmarked grave which she had inscribed with the phrase ‘A Genius of the South’. 

It is impossible not to see the poetry of this “rediscovery”: Hurston paved the way for African American women writers such as Alice Walker to flourish and in turn Walker ensured that the art and labour of her predecessor would not be lost. Hurston and her posthumous fame demonstrate how, by looking backwards, we are often able to challenge the deliberate ignorance of history towards marginalised people. We are in the habit of viewing legacy as something which is handed from one generation to the next but in reality we must fight tooth and nail to establish the legacies of those who have been denied them. Hurston’s writing is beautiful, not in spite of her identity as African American woman but because of it.

So, if you haven’t read any of Hurston’s writing already I would advise you take the time to do so- after all, there’s a world in which none of us ever got the chance to.

Image Credit: Karl Van Vechten (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)