Zora Neal Hurston: Writing Career

Living in Harlem in the 1920s, Hurston befriended the likes of Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen,
among several others. Her apartment, according to some accounts, was a popular spot for social gatherings.
Around this time, Hurston experienced a few early literary successes, including placing in short-story and
playwriting contests in Opportunitymagazine. Hurston also had serious academic interests. She landed a
scholarship to Barnard College, where she pursued the subject of anthropology and studied with Franz Boas.
In 1927, Hurston returned to Florida to collect African-American folk tales. She would later publish a
collection of these stories, entitled Mules and Men (1935). Hurston also contributed articles to magazines,
including the Journal of American Folklore.

Also in the mid-1930s, Hurston explored the fine arts through a number of different projects. She worked
with Langston Hughes on a play calledMule-Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life—disputes over the work would
eventually lead to a falling out between the two writers—and wrote several other plays, including The Great
Day and From Sun to Sun. Hurston released her first novel, Jonah's Gourd Vine, in 1934. Two years later,
she received a Guggenheim fellowship, which allowed her to work on what would become her most famous
work: Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). She wrote the novel while traveling in Haiti, where she also
studied local voodoo practices. That same year, Hurston spent time in Jamaica conducting anthropological
research.

In 1942, Hurston published her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road. This personal work was well-
received by critics, but her life and career soon began to falter. Hurston was charged with molesting a 10-
year-old boy in 1948; despite being able to prove that she was out of the country at the time of the incident,
she suffered greatly from this false accusation.

Death and Legacy

Despite all of her accomplishments, Hurston struggled financially and personally during her final decade.
She kept writing, but she had difficulty getting her work published. Additionally, she experienced some
backlash for her criticism of the 1955 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which
called for the end of school segregation. A few years later, Hurston had suffered several strokes and was
living in the St. Lucie County Welfare Home. The once-famous writer and folklorist died poor and alone on
January 28, 1960, and was buried in an unmarked grave in Fort Pierce, Florida.

More than a decade later, another great talent helped to revive interest in Hurston and her work: Alice
Walker wrote about Hurston in the essay "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston," published in Ms. magazine in
1975. Walker's essay helped introduce Hurston to a new generation of readers, and encouraged publishers to
print new editions of Hurston's long-out-of-print novels and other writings. In addition to Walker, Hurston
heavily influenced Toni Morrison and Ralph Ellison, among other writers.

Countee Cullen (May 30, 1903 – January 9, 1946), born as Countee Porter, was an American
poet, author and scholar who was a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance. (He pronounced his
name "Coun-tay", not "Coun-tee".)

This 1920s artistic movement produced the first large body of work in the United States written by
African Americans. However, Cullen considered poetry raceless, although his poem "The Black
Christ" took a racial theme, lynching of a black youth for a crime he did not commit. Countee
Cullen was very secretive about his life. His real mother did not contact him until he became
famous in the 1920s.