Hurston, Zora Neale
Hurston, Zora Neale( 1901?–60),born in Florida, after graduation from Barnard continued her study of anthropology, as evidenced in Tell My Horse (1938), about her research into folkways of Haiti and the West Indies; and Mules and Men (1935), stories of voodoo among blacks of the South. Her novels include Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), about a black preacher's loves, and Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), her masterpiece. It celebrates the self-liberation of Janie, a girl who dreams of a life redolent and symbolic of pear-tree blossoms. She goes through two marriages with domineering men. Janie publicly humiliates and leaves the first husband and suffers the second one for years until she meets her true love, Teacake, a gambler and migrant crop-picker, with whom she gladly works in the fields of Florida but kills in self-defense when he is mad with rabies. At her trial, the black community of men try to convict her...
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