Author Birography- Anna Froemming

“I have been in Sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and sword in my hands.”
~Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston was born to John and Lucy Ann Potts Hurston. A lot of her early life is unknown, partially because of the fact that she never told anyone her true age. She was born somewhere between 1891 and 1903, the fifth child of eight. She was born somewhere in The South, often argued to be Eatonville, Florida, the setting of some of her novels, or Notasulga, Alabama. We do know that she moved to Eatonville at age three. As a child, Hurston was no stranger to sadness. After her mother’s death when she was 13, Hurston was shuffled from family member to family member by her father, who had since remarried. Because of this, she received very little formal education growing up, but was able to attend school by lying about her age. She attended Howard University in Washington, D.C. where she was inspired by her professor of philosophy black culture, Alain Locke, to pursue a literary career.
Her first story "John Redding Goes to Sea," set in Eatonville, was published in the Howard literary magazine The Stylus in 1921. After this, she transferred to Barnard University and began to study anthropology. It was at this time that she became involved in the Harlem Renaissance, a movement of black writers during that time, such as Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, who did not always appreciate her blunt and often coarse nature. The Harlem Renaissance style of writing greatly influenced her and she celebrated the black community’s roots and traditions. Her writings reflected their dialect and daily struggles, combining her literary degree with her training in anthropology.
Hurston was married several times in her life, very similar to Janie, the protagonist in her story Their Eyes Were Watching God. In 1937, she was in country of Haiti when she wrote this story, in seven weeks, in the middle of a love affair with a younger man. Part of the reason she was not successful in marriage may have been due to the fact that friends described her as coarse, arrogant, eccentric, highly outspoken, and loud (webster.com.) She died relatively poor and alone in 1960.
Although growing up poor, Hurston did not portray the black community as underprivileged or a wounded people. She did not want the community to integrate into the white community for fear they would lose their identity. She influenced many writers, including Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, and Alice Walker, who would go on to revive Hurston’s writings.
Her works included Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life; Jonah’s Gourd Vine; Mules and Men; Tell My Horse; Their Eyes Were Watching God; Moses, Man of the Mountain; Dust Tracks on the Road; and Seraph on Suwanee.



References:
http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/hurs-zorx.htm
http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/hurston.html
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/hurstonzoraneale/p/hurston_bio.htm