American folklorist, anthropologist, and author Zora Neale Hurston. Aside from novels, she wrote plays, short stories, and essays during the Harlem Renaissance. Her book ‘Mules and Men’ collects folklore and anecdotes from Latin America, the Caribbean, and the South. She used this method to record tales from numerous cultures, including her own African-American culture. Her distinguished career extended thirty years. Hurston had a happy childhood till her mother died young. She had a way of winning people over with her wit and brilliance. The novelist was both gregarious and dedicated to her work. Even when the living room was full of people, she would go to her room to write. Despite her success as a Harlem Renaissance writer, poverty followed her and she had to work menial jobs till her death. In Florida, she died and was buried in an unmarked cemetery. Alice Walker found and erected a headstone for this distinguished folklorist.
Early Childhood of Zora Neale Hurston
John Hurston and Lucy Potts Hurston had Zora Neale Hurston on January 7, 1891. In total, she had seven siblings.
She grew up in Eatonville, Florida. After her mother died in 1904, her father remarried and her idyllic childhood ended.
She left home, worked modest jobs, and studied hard. She arrived in Baltimore in 1917 and finished high school at Morgan Academy.
Alumna Zora Neale Hurston earned an associate’s degree from Washington, D.C.’s Howard University in 1920
A Career of Zora Neale Hurston
Her debut story, ‘John Redding Goes to Sea,’ appeared in the university literary society’s magazine in 1921.
In December 1924, she published ‘Drenched in Light’ in ‘Opportunity’.
Barnard College, 1925-1927, anthropology with Franz Boas.
In 1926, she co-founded ‘Fire!!’ with Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman. But they only published one issue.
Hurston published for magazines including ‘Opportunity’ and ‘The Negro Digest’. In February 1927, she went to Florida to collect folklore. Barnard awarded her a BA in Anthropology that same year.
In 1932, she organized a concert of Negro music with the Florida college’s creative literature department.
In January 1935, she began her anthropology Ph.D. at Columbia. The Rosenwald Foundation awarded her a fellowship. Her 1937
Guggenheim Fellowship allowed her to study ethnography in Jamaica and Haiti.
In 1937, while in Haiti, this folklorist authored ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’. Paramount Pictures hired her as a story consultant.
‘The American Mercury’ and ‘The Saturday Evening Post’ published her writing during the 1940s.
A librarian at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida, June 1956. She became a substitute teacher at Lincoln Park Academy in Fort Pierce a few years later.
Grandiose of Zora Neale Hurston
He published ‘Mules and Men’, a compilation of African American traditional stories, in 1935. It is one of the best works on African mythology and culture.
Zora Neale Hurston published ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ in September 1937. Initially unpopular, the novel gained popularity in the 1970s and 1980s. Time magazine named it one of the 100 best English-language books written since 1923.
In 1942, she published ‘Dust Tracks on a Road,’ an autobiography praised by critics for its literary merit.
Honors & Awards
Hurston entered the magazine’s literary contest in 1925. Her tale ‘Spunk’ and play ‘Color Struck’ both came in second.
Morgan State College gave her an honorary Doctor of Letters degree in June 1939.
‘s memoirs earned the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in 1943. In the same year, she was honored by Howard University.
Personal Legacy of Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston married Herbert Sheen in 1931. In 1939, she married Albert Prince, a man 25 years her younger. This marriage lasted only 7 months.
Unfairly charged with child molestation in 1948. She was later acquitted.
She had a stroke in 1959 and went to the St. Lucie County Welfare Home. She died of hypertensive heart disease on January 28, 1960, in the same hospital.
Estimated Net Worth
Zora is one of the wealthiest and most popular Novelist. Zora Neale Hurston net worth is estimated at $1.5 Million by Wikipedia, Forbes, and Business Insider.
Trivia
For free public schooling, this famous author had to give her birth year as 1901, ten years later than her real birth year.
This American folklorist grew raised in the nation’s first rural black settlement, founded in 1887.