Zora Neale Hurston was an American author, anthropologist, folklorist, and documentary filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-20th-century American South and published research on Hoodoo and Caribbean Vodou. The most popular of her four novels is Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937. She also wrote more than 50 short stories, plays, and essays.
Imitation of Life is a popular 1933 novel by Fannie Hurst that was adapted into two successful films for Universal Pictures: a 1934 film, and a 1959 remake. The novel, which deals with issues of race, class and gender, was originally serialized in 1932 in the magazine Pictorial Review under the title "Sugar House".
Eatonville is a town in Orange County, Florida, United States, six miles north of Orlando. It is part of Greater Orlando. Incorporated on August 15, 1887, it was one of the first self-governing all-black municipalities in the United States. The Eatonville Historic District and Moseley House Museum are in Eatonville. Author Zora Neale Hurston grew up in Eatonville and the area features in many of her stories.
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a 1937 novel by American writer Zora Neale Hurston. It is considered a classic of the Harlem Renaissance, and Hurston's best known work. The novel explores protagonist Janie Crawford's "ripening from a vibrant, but voiceless, teenage girl into a woman with her finger on the trigger of her own destiny".
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a 2005 American television drama film based upon Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 novel of the same name. The film was directed by Darnell Martin, written by Suzan-Lori Parks, Misan Sagay, and Bobby Smith Jr., and produced by Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions. It stars Halle Berry, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, and Michael Ealy, and aired on ABC on March 6, 2005.
Ruby McCollum, born Ruby Jackson, was a wealthy married African-American woman in Live Oak, Florida, who is known for being arrested and convicted in 1952 for killing Dr. C. Leroy Adams, a prominent white doctor and state senator–elect. She testified as to their sexual relationship and his paternity of her child. The judge prohibited her from recounting her allegations of abuse by Adams. She was sentenced to death for his murder by an all-white jury. The sensational case was covered widely in the United States press. McCollum was subjected to a gag order. Her case was appealed and overturned by the State Supreme Court.
The Zora Neale Hurston House is a historic house at 1734 Avenue L in Fort Pierce, Florida. Built in 1957, it was the home of author Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) from then until her death. On December 4, 1991, it was designated as a U.S. National Historic Landmark.
Color Struck is a play by Zora Neale Hurston. It was originally published in 1926 in Fire!! magazine. Color Struck won second prize in Opportunity Magazine's literary contest for best play. Color Struck was not staged during the Harlem Renaissance.
"The Gilded Six-Bits" is a 1933 short story by Zora Neale Hurston, who is considered one of the pre-eminent writers of 20th-century African-American literature and a leading prose writer of the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston was a relative newcomer on the literary scene when this short story was published, but eventually had greater success with her highly acclaimed novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. "The Gilded Six-Bits" is now published in Hurston's compilation of short stories entitled Spunk in which it is now considered one of her best stories. "The Gilded Six-Bits" is a story full of love, betrayal, and forgiveness. It portrays the life of two happy newlyweds who both test their relationship and their love for one another when a charismatic outsider comes into their community and into their home. The story embodies Hurston's typical writing style in which it focuses on the common African-American lifestyle, represented by regional dialect and metaphors, and is set in her native town Eatonville, FL where it reflects the traditions of the community. "The Gilded Six-Bits" symbolizes the meaning of a true marriage and the truth that lies underneath its meaning.
Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life is a 1930 play by American authors Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. The process of writing the play led Hughes and Hurston, who had been close friends, to sever their relationship. Mule Bone was not staged until 1991, when it was produced in New York City by the Lincoln Center Theater.
Published in 1983, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose is a collection composed of 36 separate pieces written by Alice Walker. The essays, articles, reviews, statements, and speeches were written between 1966 and 1982. Many are based on her understanding of "womanist" theory. Walker defines "womanist" at the beginning of the collection as "A black feminist or feminist of color. From the black folk expression of mother to female children and also a woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women's culture. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender."
Valerie Boyd was an American writer and academic. She was best known for her biography of Zora Neale Hurston entitled Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. She was an associate professor and the Charlayne Hunter-Gault Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia, where she taught narrative nonfiction writing, as well as arts and literary journalism.
"Sweat" is a short story by the American writer Zora Neale Hurston, first published in 1926, in the first and only issue of the African-American literary magazine Fire!!. The story revolves around a washerwoman and her unemployed husband.
Dust Tracks on a Road is the 1942 autobiography of Black American writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston.
Mules and Men is a 1935 autoethnographical collection of African-American folklore collected and written by anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. The book explores stories she collected in two trips: one in Eatonville and Polk County, Florida, and one in New Orleans. Hurston's decision to focus her research on Florida came from a desire to record the cross-section of black traditions in the state. In her introduction to Mules and Men, she wrote, "Florida is a place that draws people—white people from all over the world, and Negroes from every Southern state surely and some from the North and West". Hurston documented 70 folktales during the Florida trip, while the New Orleans trip yielded a number of stories about Marie Laveau, voodoo and Hoodoo traditions. Many of the folktales are told in vernacular; recording the dialect and diction of the Black communities Hurston studied.
Jonah's Gourd Vine is Zora Neale Hurston's 1934 debut novel. The novel is a semi-autobiographical novel following John Buddy Pearson and his wife, Lucy. The characters share the same first names as Hurston's parents and make a similar migration from Notasulga, Alabama to Hurston's childhood home, Eatonville, Florida.
Seraph on the Suwanee is a 1948 novel by African-American novelist Zora Neale Hurston. It follows the life of a White woman and the fraught relationship she has with her husband and family.
Ann Graves Tanksley is an American artist. Her mediums are representational oils, watercolor and printmaking. One of her most noteworthy bodies of work is a collection based on the writings of African-American novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. The Hurston exhibition is a two hundred plus piece collection of monotypes and paintings. It toured the United States on and off from 1991 through 2010.
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick is a compilation of recovered short stories written by Zora Neale Hurston. It was published in 2020 by Amistad: An Imprint of HarperCollins publishers. ISBN 978-0-06-291579-5
