The inner world of all-black towns as seen through the eyes of Zora Neale Hurston.

In this biography, chronological chapters follow Zora Neale Hurston's family, upbringing, education, influences, and major works, placing these experiences within the context of American history. This biography of Zora Neale Hurston, one of the most influential African American writers of the 20th century and a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, is primarily for students and will cover all of the major points of development in Hurston's life as well as her major publications. Hurston's impact extends beyond the literary world: she also left her mark as an anthropologist whose ethnographic work portrays the racial struggles during the early 20th century American South. This work includes a preface and narrative chapters that explore Hurston's literary influences and the personal relationships that were most formative to her life; the final chapter, "Why Zora Neale Hurston Matters," explores her cultural and historical significance, providing context to her writings and allowing readers a greater understanding of Hurston's life while critically examining her major writing.

Traces the career of the influential African-American writer, citing the historical backdrop of her life and work while considering her relationships with and influences on top literary, intellectual, and artistic figures.

“ I mean to live and die by my own mind,” Zora Neale Hurston told the writer Countee Cullen. Arriving in Harlem in 1925 with little more than a dollar to her name, Hurston rose to become one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance, only to die in obscurity. Not until the 1970s was she rediscovered by Alice Walker and other admirers. Although Hurston has entered the pantheon as one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century, the true nature of her personality has proven elusive. Now, a brilliant, complicated and utterly arresting woman emerges from this landmark book. Carla Kaplan, a noted Hurston scholar, has found hundreds of revealing, previously unpublished letters for this definitive collection; she also provides extensive and illuminating commentary on Hurston’s life and work, as well as an annotated glossary of the organizations and personalities that were important to it. From her enrollment at Baltimore’s Morgan Academy in 1917, to correspondence with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Langston Hughes, Dorothy West and Alain Locke, to a final query letter to her publishers in 1959, Hurston’s spirited correspondence offers an invaluable portrait of a remarkable, irrepressible talent.

This exceptional collection provides new insight into the life of North Carolina writer and activist Paul Green (1894-1981), the first southern playwright to attract international acclaim for his socially conscious dramas. Green, who taught philosophy and drama at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1927 for In Abraham's Bosom, an authentic drama of black life. Among his other Broadway productions were Native Son and Johnny Johnson. From the 1930s onward, Green created fifteen outdoor historical productions known as symphonic dramas, thereby inventing a distinctly American theater form. These include The Lost Colony (1937), which is still performed today. Laurence Avery has selected and annotated the 329 letters in this volume from over 9,000 existing pieces. The letters, to such figures as Sherwood Anderson, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, John Dos Passos, Zora Neale Hurston, and others interested in the arts and human rights in the South, are alive with the intellect, buoyant spirit, and sensitivity to the human condition that made Green such an inspiring force in the emerging New South. Avery's introduction and full bibliography of the playwright's works and first productions give readers a context for understanding Green's life and times.

Zora Neale Hurston(1891 -- 1960) Of the various signs that the study of literature in America has been transformed, none is more salient than is the resurrection and canonization of Zora Neale Hurston. Twenty years ago, Hurston's work was largely out-of-print, her literary legacy alive only to a tiny, devoted band of readers who were often forced to photocopy her works if they were to be taught ... Today her works are central to the canon of African-American, American, and Women's literatures ... The author of four novels, Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937),Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939), and Seraph on the Suwanee (1948); two books of folklore -- Mules and Men (1935) and Tell My Horse (1938); an autobiography, Dust Tracks On a Road (1942); and over 50 short stories, essays, and plays, Hurston was one of the most widely acclaimed Black authors for the two decades between 1925 and 1945. -- from the Preface by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

This new biography takes into account the whole woman—not just the prolific author of such great works as Their Eyes Were Watching God , Moses, Man of the Mountain, Jonah's Gourd Vine, Mules and Men, as well as essays, folklore, short stories, and poetry—but the philosopher and the spiritual soul, examining how each is reflected in her career, fiction and nonfiction publications, social and political activity, and, ultimately, her death. When we ask what animated the woman who achieved all that she did, we must necessarily probe further. Not one of the other existing biographies discusses or analyzes Hurston's spirituality in any sustained sense, even though this spirituality played a significant role in her life and works. As author Deborah G. Plant shows, Zora Neale Hurston's ability to achieve and to endure all she did came from the courage of her convictions—a belief in self that was profoundly centered and anchored in spirituality.