The life of Zora Neale Hurston - Research Paper Example

of Affiliation I. Her bio Zora Neale Hurston, one of the best known African American Folklorist, novelist and anthropologist, was born to Reverent John and Lucy Hurston at Eatonville, Florida. The dates of her birth are still unclear though many writing places it between 1901 and 1903. Zora was hardly 10 years of age when her mother passed away forcing her father to remarry. This did not work for her as she soon found herself at loggerhead with her stepmother. It is at this point that her father opted to take her to school far away in Jacksonville.

At some point in her teenage life, Zora worked as a wardrobe girl with a theatre company called Gilbert and Sullivan repertory company. In 1917, she enrolled in Morgan academy found in Maryland with the help of her former employer. After her graduation, she joined Howard University where she studied for one and a half years and secured a scholarship that saw her transfer to Barnard College for a degree course. Between 1928 and 1932, she studied human culture at Columbia University. In 1936, she got a Guggenheim Fellowship award for travelling and collecting folklore in the British West Indies and Haiti (Boyd 35).

Throughout her life, Zora engaged in a number of jobs alongside her writing. She served as a secretary while working with Fannie Hurst (1889–1968); she later became a writer in paramount and Warner brother’s studios. She also worked as a librarian with the library of congress and finally as a drama tutor at North Carolina Collage for Negroes.II. Her body of work Zora most celebrated work include her novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God” written in 1937, her collection of American folklore that included Tell My Horse (1939) and Mules and Men (1935).

Zora worked on three other novels: Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939), a retell of the Mosaic biblical allegory in an African perspective, Seraph on the Suwanee (1948), a story of woman experience in love; and Jonahs Gourd Vine (1934), an autobiography of her father.III. Her literary colleagues, Harlem Renaissance, etc Hurston met a number of people who significantly shaped her carrier life, this include notable African American writers such as Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps and Jessie Fauset, all of whom belonged to the renown New Negro movement that was later change to Harlem Renaissance.IV. What critics have said about HurstonLike many other writers, Hurston has her own critics.

One of them is Darwin Turner who suggested that she was a "quick-tempered woman, arrogant toward her peers, obsequious toward her supposed superiors, desperate for recognition and reassurance to assuage her feelings of inferiority" (1979).V. What you say about herClearly, Zora was a strong willed and hardworking woman, who despite her odds she chose to never give up but instead bring out all that is within her. She is a true embodiment of self-determination that spring from a strong desire to excel.

She was great.Works CitedBoyd, Valerie. Wrapped in rainbows: the life of Zora Neale Hurston. New York: Scribner, 2003. Print.Hemenway, Robert E. Zora Neale Hurston: a literary biography. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977. Print.