Hurston is best known for Their Eyes Were Watching God, but this controversial author wrote other novels, stories, plays, and more.
Zora Neale Hurston is a favorite among women readers, especially for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. While that's great, her writing should not be limited by gender. She's an author who not only published three other novels, short stories, and a memoir but also books on African-American folklore (Mules and Men) and Caribbean voodoo (Tell My Horse). With Langston Hughes, she wrote a play, Mule Bone.
Their Eyes Were Watching God tells of Janie Crawford's journey from childhood to mature womanhood. We see her development-through three relationships and adversity-as she learns self-acceptance and understanding of the society that she lives in.
It's interesting that Hurston chose to place Janie in areas in Florida similar to the one that Hurston herself grew up in. Eatonville, Florida, was an all-black town where Hurston was born in, it is assumed, 1891. For Hurston, Eatonville was an almost ideal enclave where outside racism could be avoided.
Hurston went on to earn her bachelor's degree at Barnard College in New York, where she studied with Columbia professor and anthropologist Franz Boas. As a Harlem Renaissance writer with her background, Hurston's work dealt mainly with African-American life and folklore.
She was not without controversy, however. One issue arose with her last novel, Seraph on the Suwanee. The main character, Arvay Henson, is a white woman who is concerned with finding love. While the literary merits of the novel may be questionable, when this book was published in 1948 Hurston was confronted by a "double racism." White readers felt that African-American authors were only able to write about black issues. Some African-American readers said that it was the responsibility of black writers to write books that represent African Americans.
This was an issue that clearly came out of segregated, pre-civil rights American society. However, it is a concern that continues for a few readers today. Hurston's view was that people were people and therefore she could write about anyone.
That controversy, a wrongful morals allegation, financial difficulties, conflict with the civil rights movement, and other concerns diminished Hurston's literary reputation. She died in poverty in 1960.
In the 1970s,with the resurgence of interest in African-American writing and the women's movement, Zora Neale Hurston's books resurfaced. Alice Walker did much to bring Hurston to the attention of new readers. In 2005, Oprah Winfrey produced a movie version of Their Eyes Were Watching God,. starring Halle Berry as Janie.
