Author

Zora Neale Hurston

1891-1960 · American novelist and folklorist of the Harlem Renaissance, author of Their Eyes Were Watching God

About Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) was born in Notasulga, Alabama, and grew up in Eatonville, Florida, one of the first incorporated Black towns in the United States. She studied at Howard University and Barnard College, collected folklore in the South and the Caribbean, and became a leading voice of the Harlem Renaissance with fiction, essays and the autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road (1942). Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) is her best-known novel. She died in relative obscurity in Florida; her reputation was revived from the 1970s, aided by Alice Walker's advocacy.

Notable works

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Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston

1937 · Early 20th Century · Novel

Their Eyes Were Watching God follows Janie Crawford, a fair-skinned Black woman in Florida, as she tells her friend Pheoby Watson the story of her life and her search for a voice and a love that does not silence her. Raised by her grandmother Nanny, who was born in slavery and wants Janie's safety above all, Janie is married off young to the farmer Logan Killicks.

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