Biography
Due to her extensive folklore collection and anthropological fieldwork, pursued partly to enrich her literary projects, Zora Neale Hurston surfaces in recording credits despite her stature as a major African American author. After completing her studies at Barnard College, she drew at length upon childhood recollections of Eatonville, FL—the nation’s first fully incorporated black community, where her father held the office of mayor—to shape her narratives. Florida likewise provided the setting in which Hurston, joined by Alan Lomax, located the classic blues performer Gabriel Brown.
During the 1940s Brown appeared in Polk County, a Hurston production mounted in New York City that Lomax characterized as “a ballad opera set in a turpentine camp.” Hurston ranks among the principal figures of the black cultural awakening known as the Harlem Renaissance, which originated in the 1920s. Short stories first attracted serious critical notice; her texts have since been excerpted and performed by artists of successive generations, among them Clara Smith and Kate Campbell. Her novels comprise Their Eyes Watching God, Tell My Horse, and Moses, Man of the Mountain. She died in Florida, reportedly living in poverty.
During the 1940s Brown appeared in Polk County, a Hurston production mounted in New York City that Lomax characterized as “a ballad opera set in a turpentine camp.” Hurston ranks among the principal figures of the black cultural awakening known as the Harlem Renaissance, which originated in the 1920s. Short stories first attracted serious critical notice; her texts have since been excerpted and performed by artists of successive generations, among them Clara Smith and Kate Campbell. Her novels comprise Their Eyes Watching God, Tell My Horse, and Moses, Man of the Mountain. She died in Florida, reportedly living in poverty.