Zora Neale Hurston Author, Anthropologist, & Feminist Icon!
Who is the real Zora Neale Hurston? Is she the black feminist icon that lived her life passionately and independently on her own terms? Or is Zora Neale Hurston the opportunist that wrote controversial articles during the civil rights era to create publicity? I love Zora Neale Hurston because she wasn’t perfect. Zora was ahead of her time a black woman scholar in an era where many black women were domestics. Zora also was a domestic for a period of time in her life but she was so determined to make it as a writer. Zora fought racism and sexism to become a major literary superstar.
For instance, Zora Neale Hurston wrote a controversial letter to an Orlando newspaper denouncing the decision the Brown Vs Board of Education 1955 case about segregation in American schools. In fact, Hurston stated that she didn’t want black children to feel inferior by the system and felt separate schools should continue. Hurston was slammed by the NAACP and other black civil rights leaders for her explosive articles and viewpoints on polemical issues.
I think far too often in the black community we like our role models or heroes to be saints. Zora was so outspoken I love this side of her personality! I love Zora Neale Hurston because she had a lot of spunk. She wasn’t afraid to speak her mind for what she believed in. Hurston openly criticized the black male leaders of her era such as W.E.B. Du Bois and his pretentious uppity attitude about the “talented tenth”. Du Bois believed that only the “elite blacks” should speak up for the “race” and be “leaders” of the race. Hurston although a scholar she never believed she was superior to the masses.
Hurston is best known for her incredible 1937 novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God” an important black feminist novel about a black woman’s liberation from patriarchy and male domination. However, Hurston didn’t just write novels. Hurston was also an anthropologist she wrote two books “Mules and men” in 1935 and “Tell My Horse” in 1938 two important books on black folklore . Hurston’s first book “Jonah’s Gourd Vine” is about the problems in Zora’s parents marriage. Hurston’s father was a preacher and he was unfaithful to Zora’s mother.
Zora Neale Hurston was overlooked in her era because she was an outspoken black woman. Zora lived in an era when women were supposed to be submissive to men. However, Zora Neale Hurston was a feminist and she refused to allow any man to control her!
Some of the most famous black male writers of Zora’s era had no respect for her. Richard Wright the author of “Native Son” criticized Hurston because in her novels she utilized the southern dialect and not “standard” English. Feminist scholars now praise Hurston because they believe her writing were authentic because she wrote the way the southern blacks talked.
Zora Neale Hurston was a republican and conservative. Although, I must admit, I was not impressed that Zora wrote the incendiary public letter to a Florida newspaper after the famous Brown Vs Board of Education Supreme Court decision. Zora said she was against allowing black children to attend the same school as white children. Zora ignored the fact the USA government provided more money for white schools than black schools.
Zora was not afraid of rocking the boat. When I read Hurston’s autobiography “Dust Tracks On A Road”, I am aware that she does fabricate sections of her life. For instance, Zora was not born in the town of Eatonville she actually was born in Notasulga Alabama in the year 1891 and not the year 1901 as she often claimed. Parts of Hurston’s autobiography is pure fiction.
The parts of Hurston’s autobiography I found most interesting was Zora’s sheer determination to become a successful writer. Zora went to high school when she was well into her twenties. Zora was also very shrewd in finding wealthy people to help support her to advance her education. Zora attended Barnard College and she graduated with a B.A. degree in anthropology.
Next, Zora studied with the famous anthropologist Franz Boas.
Hurston she talks about how she “fell” in love with fellow anthropologist Jane Belo. Hurston doesn’t explain what this statement means. Perhaps it was just a phrase a way for Hurston to express her devotion to her good friend Jane Belo? Hurston briefly discusses her friendship with the white writer Fanny Hurst. I didn’t really feel like Hurst respected Zora completely as an equal.
Hurston’s three marriages were brief and short. Hurston also doesn’t seem to place much emphasis on these relationships and she totally glosses over her love life in her own memoir. Perhaps Hurston was reticent because she believed part of her life deserved to be private?
Gayblackcanada 
She died forgotten, but she was not overlooked in the 1920s. She got help and support not only from Bored White Nonentities as some seem to think, but also from people like Boas and the (mostly female, all white) people around him. And this included at least up to 1940 rich, but interesting people like Elsie Parsons and Jane Belo. One problem ZNH created for herself seems to have been that she decided not to go into Anthropology after all, but to stay a writer. But then I am no expert on ZNH, you will know all this much better than I do.
This is all wishful thinking. Do you honestly think that a woman who was outspoken throughout most of her life would have kept her relationships with women in private? I personally know people who worked and were personal friends of Ms. Hurston and they were never any mentions of rumors that she liked women. But they were countless recollections on how outspoken she was on things she was passionate about and it ruined her writing career and got her fired more than once including a local library in my hometown.
Hurston didn’t speak about her three marriages because they didn’t last very long, so why reflect? Even Alice Walker, the woman who re-discovered Ms. Hurston, has even weighed in on the matter in Robert Hemenway’s Literary Biography. She states that the question of her sexuality was probably borne in the mouths of her jealous peers and critics.
“Zora was funny, irreverent, (she was the first to call the Harlem Renaissance literati the “niggerati”), good-looking and sexy…They disliked her apparent sensuality: the way she tended to marry or not marry men, but enjoyed them anyway, while never missing a beat in her work. They hinted slyly that Zora was gay, or at least bisexual-how else could they account for her drive?-though there is not a shred of evidence that this was true.”