An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted 8/5/2020
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"Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me."
Meet Zora Neale Hurston, one of the foremost filmmakers, novelists and playwrights of the Harlem Renaissance --obscure for a while but now beginning to re-emerge as a topic for discussion, partly due to novelist Alice Walker's (The Color Purple) great enthusiasm for Hurston's work.
Born in 1891 Alabama to parents who had once been slaves, Hurston first burst onto the literary scene with four award-winning submissions to Opportunity magazine: a second-place fiction prize for a short story Spunk, a second-place award in drama for her play Color Struck (a title which she purportedly liked to bellow), and two honorable mentions. Not a bad first impression!
Hurston's quirky charm and acidic wit made her something of a hub for artists and writers during the Harlem Renaissance --and among her many literary achievements were her defining masterworks: Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939). Sadly, by the 1940's her light dimmed and she passed into relative obscurity, dying in 1960 and being buried in an unmarked grave --until Walker famously revived interest in Hurston's work; up to and including redressing Hurston's tombstone in a manner befitting her intellect and delightfully snarky sense of humour.
Your homework - rediscover Hurston by listening to "Intersections: Crafting a Voice for Black Culture" on NPR at: https://www.npr.org/2004/04/26/1849395/intersections-crafting-a-voice-for-black-culture
Next page - Lesson 26: Charles R. Drew