Zora Neale Hurston Questions and Answers
Zora Neale Hurston
Are Zora Neale Hurston's books appropriate for young teens?
I think that Hurston's books are highly appropriate for teens in a couple of ways. The first would be that Hurston is speaking from a point of view that is so authentic and so powerful that...
Zora Neale Hurston
How have conceptions of race and human origins been influenced by various religious and secular belief systems, and...
I am sympathetic to you because this is a convoluted question that seems to have very little to do with what Hurston is talking about in "How It Feels to be Colored Me." However, one could read her...
Zora Neale Hurston
What is Zora Neale Hurston's view on slavery?
Zora Neale Hurston discusses her attitude toward slavery in the essay "How it Feels to Be Colored Me." Rather surprisingly, the essay is humorous in tone and rejects the notion of slavery as an...
Zora Neale Hurston
What does Hurston's statement in "Characteristics of Negro Expression" imply about the differing thought processes of...
This statement speaks to the way different cultural histories have led Black people and white people to have different forms of thinking and expression. In particular, it alludes to the many years in...
Zora Neale Hurston
Should Hurston be considered a "local color" writer? Why or why not?
Personally, I am always wary of these labels when they are applied to writers. They tend to oversimplify the relationships of the author to his or her subject matter and cultural context. In the...
Zora Neale Hurston
How does "The Gilded Six-Bits" by Hurston parallel the Garden of Eden story in the Bible?
In "The Gilded Six-Bits" by Zora Neale Hurston, Joe and Missie May's story is similar to the biblical story of Adam and Eve. In the beginning of both stories, a beautiful garden is emphasized. In...
Zora Neale Hurston
How do William Faulkner and Zora Neale Hurston differently portray the South? Which depiction is more accurate?
Two writers, both products of the American South, both born in the latter part of the 19th Century and both died in the middle of the 20th Century. One, however, was white and raised in a...
Zora Neale Hurston
What type of community is Eatonville, according to Zora Neale Hurston?
There are at least a couple of different texts in which Zora Neale Hurston describes Eatonville, Florida, a town where she grew up but also one in which she set her best-known novel, Their Eyes...
Zora Neale Hurston
What does Hurston mean by "I remember the very day that I became colored" and how does it reflect on early...
In her essay, "How It Feels to Be Colored Me," Zora Neale Hurston begins by describing her childhood in Eatonville, Florida—an all-black community. She recalls seeing passing white visitors,...
Zora Neale Hurston
Why was Zora Neale Hurston criticized for accepting endowments from white supporters?
Hurston wrote a great many stories, but she could not support herself on the money earned. Found herself having to live on funds given to her by patrons of the arts. There were white...
Zora Neale Hurston
Why was Zora Neale Hurston against W.E.B. DuBois's Racial Uplift movement?
In her essay "How It Feels to be Colored Me," Zora Neale Hurston mentions what she calls the "sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal." The...
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston's fame and posthumous recognition
Zora Neale Hurston gained posthumous recognition primarily through the efforts of author Alice Walker, who revived interest in Hurston's work with her essay "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston" in 1975....
Zora Neale Hurston
What is a good non-book-specific thesis topic for Zora Neale Hurston?
One of the most interesting things I have always remembered about Zora Neal Hurston is something very bold which she did--both as a woman and as an African-American. She was writing during...