Inspirational Quotes by Zora Neale Hurston (American Novelist)

Zora Neale Hurston (c.1891–1960) was an African-American novelist and folklorist. She was associated with the Harlem Renaissance, a 1920s intellectual, social, and artistic celebration of the African American culture of the rural South.

Born in Eatonville, Florida, Hurston was educated at Baltimore’s Morgan Academy and Washington, D.C.’s Howard University. She also studied cultural anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University, worked under anthropologist Franz Boas, and became a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

Hurston’s works include Mules and Men (1935,) a black folk interpretation of Biblical Jews. Her best-known novel is Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937,) which explores the themes of male oppression and female autonomy. Hurston also wrote plays, short stories, and the autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road (1942.)

In the 1950s, Hurston withdrew from public life. Her controversial condemnation of the Supreme Court’s ruling on school desegregation distanced her from her contemporaries. She argued that the pressure for integration deprived the value of existing black institutions. Plagued by ill health in the final years, she died in poverty.

Novelist and social activist Alice Walker published the collection of Hurston’s writings I Love Myself When I Am Laughing (1979.)

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