ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — Today, we acknowledge one of the most iconic African American writers of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston. The novelist, anthropologist, playwright, folklorist and film-maker portrayed the racial struggles of African Americans living in America’s South in the early 1900s.
A true feminist before it was fashionable to sport the title, Hurston’s works remained unrecognized by the literary world until 1975 when Alice Walker, author of the Color Purple, revived interest in all things Hurston through her essay, In Search of Zora Neale Hurston. Published in 1975 by MS. Magazine, the article acknowledged Hurston as a literary icon. Projected to feminist stardom, Zora became a household name.
Hurston’s novels, essays, satires, folklore anthologies, even her autobiography, Dust Tracks On A Road, quickly garnered her acclaim that had eluded her during her life.
Now heralded, Hurston’s strong independent black female characters and use of an African American dialect were no longer shunned by the literary world. Hurston’s 1937 publication, Their Eyes Were Watching God which had been out of print for almost 30 years, earned her the recognition as one of the most prolific female writers of the 20th Century. Their Eyes Were Watching God now graces high school summer reading lists.
As Hurston’s popularity skyrocketed, scholars, writers, and feminists unveiled a life emboldened by advanced education, multiple marriages, extensive travel, a fascination for voodoo and a disdain for using religion as a weakness.
“Prayer,” she noted in her autobiography, “seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility. Life, as it is, does not frighten me, since I have made my peace with the universe as I find it, and bow to its laws.”
And yet despite her ability to trail blaze a path of literary achievement through academic determination and carefree independence, Hurston died in utter obscurity from heart disease in a welfare home in Florida’s County of St. Lucie. The date was January 28th, 1960. Her remains resided in an unmarked grave in the Garden of Heavenly Rest in Fort Pierce until 1973 when Walker and fellow Hurston scholar Charlotte D. Hunt left a marker on an unmarked grave in the area where they believed Hurston was buried.
WOKV caught up with Rae Chesny, an award winning social education expert, Johns Hopkins University Literary Consultant and Zora Neale Hurston Scholar, to learn more about the life and writings of the literary icon.
Listen to WOKVs Lucia Viti’s complete podcast with Rae Chesny:
https://od-cmg.streamguys1.com/jacksonville-market/20220221060813-LVZoraPodcastFinal2.16.mp3
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