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Zora Neale Hurston ( 1891 – January 28 , 1960 ) was an African-American Folklorist and author of the Harlem Renaissance , best known for the novel '' Their Eyes Were Watching God ''. BACKGROUND AND CAREER Childhood As noted in both the ''Heath Anthology of American Literature,'' as well as the '', the first African American United States township. Hurston would discuss her Eatonville childhood in the 1928 essay, "How It Feels To Be Colored Me" [http://beatl.barnard.columbia.edu/wsharpe/citylit/colored_me.htm . College and anthropology She began her undergraduate studies at Howard University but left after a few years, unable to support herself. She was later offered a scholarship to Barnard College where she received her B.A. in Anthropology in 1927. While at Barnard, she conducted ethnographic research under her advisor, the noted anthropologist Franz Boas of Columbia University . She also worked with Ruth Benedict as well as fellow anthropology student Margaret Mead {Link without Title} . Career Hurston applied her ethnographic training to document African American folklore in her critically acclaimed book ''Mules and Men'' (1935) along with fiction ('' Their Eyes Were Watching God '') and dance, assembling and leading a finger popping group which performed works such as the 1932 Broadway performance ''The Great Day''. In addition, Hurston was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to travel to Haiti and conduct research in 1937. She was one of the first academics to conduct an ethnographic study of the Vodun , also a subject of study for fellow dancer/anthropologist Katherine Dunham who was then at the University Of Chicago {Link without Title} . In 1954 Hurston (who had fallen upon hard times) was assigned to cover the murder trial of Ruby McCollum for the ''Pittsburgh Courier'' with journalist/author and Civil Rights advocate William Bradford Huie . Death Hurston died penniless in obscurity and was buried in an unmarked Grave in Fort Pierce, Florida until African-American novelist Alice Walker found and marked the grave in 1973, sparking a Hurston renaissance. POLITICS During her prime, Hurston was a supporter of the UNIA and Marcus Garvey , casting herself in fierce opposition to Communism as professed by many of her colleagues in the Harlem Rennaisance such as Langston Hughes, who wrote several poems of effusive praise for the Soviet Union . Hurston thus became by far the leading black figure on the Libertarian Old Right , and in 1952 she actively promoted the presidential candidacy of Robert Taft . Hurston's detachment from the wider '' in August 1955. This letter caused a furor and proved to be Hurston's last public intervention. Other notable black old rightists included George Schuyler and Lawrence Dennis . PUBLIC OBSCURITY AND ACCLAIM Hurston's work slid into obscurity for decades, for a number of reasons, cultural and political. Many readers objected to the representation of African American Dialect in Hurston's novels. Hurston's stylistic choices in terms of dialogue were influenced by her academic experiences. Thinking like a Folklorist , Hurston strove to represent speech patterns of the period which she documented through Ethnographic research. For example (Amy from the opening of ''Jonah's Gourd Vine''): ''"Dat's a big ole resurrection lie, Ned. Uh slew-foot, drag-leg lie at dat, and Ah dare yuh tuh hit me too. You know Ahm uh fightin' dawg and mah hide is worth money. Hit me if you dare! Ah'll wash yo' tub uh 'gator guts and dat quick."'' Some critics during her time felt, however, that Hurston's decision to render language in this way caricatured Black culture (and thus not deserving of respect). In more recent times, however, critics have praised Hurston for her artful capture of the actual spoken idiom of the day. The apoliticality of Hurston's work also hindered the public's reception of her books. During the 1930s and 1940s when her work was published, the preeminent African American author was Richard Wright . Unlike Hurston, Wright wrote in explicitly political terms, using the struggle of Black Americans for respect and economic advancement as both the setting and the motivation for his work. Wright's works supported the Leftist political struggle of the 1930s during the Great Depression . Other popular African American authors of the time, such as Ralph Ellison and Langston Hughes were also aligned with Wright's vision of the struggle of African Americans . Hurston's work, which did not engage these explicit leftist political issues, simply did not fit in smoothly with this struggle. With the publication of the ambitous novel Seraph on the Suwanee in 1948, Hurston burst through the tight bounds of contemporary black writing in yet another seemingly apolitical way. This is a tale of poor whites struggling in rural Florida's citrus industry. Black characters recede to the background. Neither the black intelligentsia nor the white mainstream of the late 40s could accept the notion of a black writer speaking through white characters. Panned across the board, Seraph ended up being Hurston's last major literary effort as she retreated to small-town Florida for the rest of her life. The text stands out, as she remarked herself, as a testimony to her own self-definition as a regional as much as a black writer. The voice of the Florida cracker -- the poor white -- was every bit as much hers as the poor blacks of Eatonton, Polk County, and Lake Okeechobee. It is arguably the outstanding Florida cracker novel, more sophisticated than any of the works of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (to whom it is dedicated). At the time, however, it proved victim of the author's own creative and social boldness: a black writer's version of William Styron's "Confessions of Nat Turner" that appeared twenty years later to similarly fierce criticism of a white daring to write about black characters. In the academy, anthropologists often disdained Hurston's works as fiction, and thus unworthy of inclusion on anthropological reading lists. Feminist critics of Academia have observed that a number of novels and non-fiction works of Confessional Literature written by women with anthropological training that draw upon their observations and experiences were sidelined in this fashion. Hurston's work was, in this respect, treated in the same manner as some books by Elsie Clews Parsons , Ella Deloria , and Laura Bohannon , among others. At the same time, when well known male anthropologists began to experiment with literary form and style in Ethnography , they were often hailed for their work. Many critics therefore perceive the lack of academic acclaim for Hurston's work to indicate a form of institutional Sexism . Hurston's books have since been discussed and celebrated not only as African American Literature , but as Feminist Literature as well. Zora Neale Hurston was also a member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated. REVIVAL
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