Zora Neale Hurston (Critical Lives)

This book explores the creativity and life of Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960), the most published African American woman writer of the first half of the twentieth century. A Barnard-educated anthropologist, folklorist and novelist, Hurston, as Cheryl R. Hopson relates, was a woman on the move. Her life spanned a period of rapid technological change and advancement, and one of entrenched racial stratification. Hopson foregrounds how the Jim Crow legal system in the United States formed the material backdrop to Hurston’s life and work, and explores Hurston’s signature novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, as well as her lesser-known works. This biography is an insightful and illuminating look at a remarkable figure, and chronicles the rediscovery of Hurston years after her death.