Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston was an American writer and anthropologist of the Harlem Renaissance, best known for the novel *Their Eyes Were Watching God* (1937).
Her work celebrated Black Southern vernacular and folklore, drawing on fieldwork in Florida and the Caribbean.
Long neglected, she was rediscovered in the 1970s through Alice Walker's advocacy and is now considered a foundational figure in African American literature.
Systematic study of peoples
- fieldworkResearch conducted on location
- Columbia UniversityManhattan's Ivy League institution
- hoodooFolk magic tradition
- voodooFolk magic, often Caribbean
conjure · oral tradition · informants · folk songs · work songs · sermons · Jamaica · Haiti
- rediscoveryFinding something previously known
- literary revivalResurgence in written arts
- womanistBlack feminist framework
Traditional oral narratives
- tall talesFantastical exaggerated stories
- Brer RabbitAfrican-American folklore's clever hare
- storytellingRecounting events aloud
- front porchCovered entry deck
oral history · proverbs · call-and-response · spirituals · folk beliefs · root work · signifying · dialect
Cultivated lemon-orange plantations
- rural lifeExistence in the countryside
- OrlandoCentral Florida city
- JacksonvilleMajor Florida coastal city
- unmarked graveBurial site without identification
- Fire!!Rapid oxidation with flames
- jazzImprovisational American music genre
- Cotton ClubLegendary Harlem jazz venue
ethnography
Systematic study of peoples
- fieldworkResearch conducted on location
- Columbia UniversityManhattan's Ivy League institution
- hoodooFolk magic tradition
voodoo · conjure · oral tradition · informants · folk songs · work songs · sermons · Jamaica · Haiti · New Orleans
Alice Walker
- rediscoveryFinding something previously known
- literary revivalResurgence in written arts
- womanistBlack feminist framework
folktales
Traditional oral narratives
- tall talesFantastical exaggerated stories
- Brer RabbitAfrican-American folklore's clever hare
- storytellingRecounting events aloud
front porch · oral history · proverbs · call-and-response · spirituals · folk beliefs · root work · signifying · dialect · vernacular
citrus groves
Cultivated lemon-orange plantations
- rural lifeExistence in the countryside
- OrlandoCentral Florida city
- JacksonvilleMajor Florida coastal city
Langston Hughes
- Fire!!Rapid oxidation with flames
- jazzImprovisational American music genre
- Cotton ClubLegendary Harlem jazz venue
- AuthorsShakespeare, William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Famous AuthorsShakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Hemingway, Twain
- Southern IconsElvis Presley, William Faulkner, Martin Luther King Jr., Tennessee Williams, Rosa Parks
- Women WritersJane Austen, Emily Bronte, Virginia Woolf, George Eliot, Anne Bronte
- American LiteratureThe Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick, Moby Dick
- anthropologyanthropology, fieldwork, ethnography, social anthropology, cultural anthropology
Zora Neale HurstonRichard Wright
protest literature · W.E.B. Du Bois · social realism · Langston Hughes · Ralph Ellison
Zora Neale HurstonRichard Wright
Ralph Ellison · James Baldwin · Langston Hughes · Norman Mailer