Zora Neale Hurston Posters, Books, Links for Learning
for the literature, language arts and social studies classrooms.

	• ZORA NEALE HURSTON POSTERS Celebrate Black History
	Zora Neale Hurston, Voices of Diversity Poster Voices of Diversity - Zora Neale Hurston Wall Poster “Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.” Their Eyes Were Watching God • more Voices of Diversity Posters
	Zora Neale Hurston, Laminated Poster Zora Neale Hurston A Restless and Creative Spirit - Trained as an anthropologist, Zora Neale Hurston wrote novels that sprang from the heart of African American culture. She ingeniously combined a standard English narrative style with material she gathered in travels through the American south – the songs and stories of black folklore. While Hurston drew criticism from some black writers for not taking a political stand, her work is now celebrated as the expression of a unique, uncompromising voice. • more Notable Authors posters
	The Harlem Renaissance Composite Poster The Harlem Renaissance Poster • who is in this poster? • more Harlem Renaissance posters
	Felicia Felix-Mentor of Haiti, Photographic Print by Zora Neale Hurston Photographic Print of Felicia Felix-Mentor, Haiti, by Zora Neale Hurston
	Franz Boas, TIME Magazine Cover May 11, 1936 Franz Boas b. 7-9-1858; Germany d. 12-21-1942; NY Franz Boas, considered the "Father of American Anthroplogy", received his doctorate in physics, and post post-doctoral work in geography. By applying the scientifc method to the study of human cultures, he moved anthrology past anecdotal knowledge. Boas, who attended a Froebel kindergarten, also had Margaret Mead and Zora Neale Hurston as students.
	• Famous Women posters • more Black History posters • anthropology posters

“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.”
Zora Neale Hurston
b. 1-7-1891; AL (raised in FL)
d. 1-28-1960

Zora Neale Hurston, author and anthropologist, was born January 7, 1891 to John Hurston, a tenant farmer, carpenter and Baptist minister, and Lucy Ann Hurston, a former teacher, in Notasulga, Alabama. The family moved to Eatonville, Florida, an all black community, where Zora lived until the death of her mother.

Zora left home at the age of fourteen, working as a maid for a traveling theater group and eventually ending up in Baltimore, Maryland where she enrolled in and graduated from Morgan College Preparatory School in 1918.

Hurston furthered her education at Howard University where her professors encouraged her writing. In 1925, during the time Harlem Renaissance was peaking, she received a scholarship to Barnard College in New York and studied anthropology under Franz Boas.

Zora was a gifted student and was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1928. She returned to Eatonville and collected materials related to the customs, traditional beliefs, legends, and sayings of the African American culture and evolved those studies into two collections of folktales, four novels, an autobiography, a stage play and a number of essays.

By the mid 1940s her writing career was failing. Unable to interest publishers in her work she took a series of jobs to support herself. Zora Neale Hurston died from a stroke in 1960 and is buried in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Books by and about Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston : Novels and Stories : Jonah’s Gourd Vine / Their Eyes Were Watching God / Moses, Man of the Mountain / Seraph on the Suwanee / Selected Stories (Library of America) - When she died in obscurity in 1960, all her books were out of print. Now, Zora Neale Hurston is recognized as one of the most important and influential modern American writers. This volume, with its companion, Zora Neale Hurston: Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings, brings together for the first time all of Hurston’s best works in one authoritative set. It features the acclaimed 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, a lyrical masterpiece about a woman’s struggle for love and independence. Jonah’s Gourd Vine, based on the story of Hurston’s parents, details the rise and fall of a preacher torn between spirit and flesh. Moses, Man of the Mountain is a high-spirited retelling of the Exodus story in black vernacular. Seraph on the Suwanee portrays the passionate clash between a poor southern “cracker” and her willful husband. A selection of short stories further displays Hurston’s unique fusion of folk traditions and literary modernism--comic, ironic, and soaringly poetic.

Zora Neale Hurston : Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings : Mules and Men, Tell My Horse, Dust Tracks on a Road, Selected Articles companion to Hurston’s Novels and Stories presents her nonfiction work, which is perhaps less familiar but no less important than her fiction in the body of black literature. This is the first time the unexpurgated version of her 1942 autobiography, Dust Tracks on the Road, is being published; sections deemed too provocative (dealing with politics, race, and sex) have been restored. Mules and Men (1935) is a collection of African American folklore she gleaned on travels in the South, while Tell My Horse (1938) tenders her personal findings on African-based religion in Jamaica and Haiti. Additionally, 22 magazine and book articles with anthropological themes (Hurston did graduate work in that field) that have never been gathered into book form are corralled here. As readers only familiar with her fiction will discover, she couches her nonfiction in the same visceral yet poetic style - for instance, this quote from Dust Tracks: ‘It seems to me that trying to live without friends is like milking a bear to get cream for your morning coffee. It is a whole lot of trouble, and then not worth much after you get it.’ It will never be easier to acquire a complete set of Hurston’s nonfiction than now.

LINKS FOR LEARNING: ZORA NEALE HURSTON