Why is Zora Neale Hurston famous?

Although she worked as an anthropologist for much of her life, Zora Neale Hurston is most famous for her writing, most especially her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, considered a classic of the Harlem Renaissance era. But she was almost not famous at all! In fact, when she died penniless in a welfare home in Florida in 1960, she was all but forgotten. However, in 1973, author Alice Walker, a literary descendant of Hurston’s, went looking for her grave. Walker later wrote about it in a well-known essay entitled "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston," published in Ms. Magazine in 1975.

After that, feminist scholars and teachers began to continue to revive interest in Hurston, and eventually the general public caught on. Now, Their Eyes Were Watching God is a frequently read and taught book in high schools and colleges and is considered a classic of American literature.

Zora Neale Hurston is an important part of the canon of twentieth-century American literature for several reasons. While one could claim that the most important reason is the quality of her writing, that is a somewhat subjective matter, as people can reasonably disagree over whether they consider books well- or badly written.

The first reason students are asked to read her work is that she represents a women's voice in the Harlem Renaissance, a movement of predominantly male African-American writers. Her perspective is therefore unusual. She is a forerunner of the more recent black female writers such as Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker and important to understanding them. She is also distinctive in being a conservative voice, unlike many of her more liberal peers.

Next, she writes about the early free black cities of Florida, which gives many of her characters roots in an African-American tradition that is not dominated by racism and slavery, but in black success.

Finally, as well as being a creative writer, she studied anthropology and collected, studied, and preserved African-American folklore. Her distinctive use of African-American dialect in part reflects this desire to preserve and make public the unique artifacts of her cultural tradition.

Why did Zora Neale Hurston's work gain more fame after her death?

Zora Neale Hurston was widely known as a writer and political activist during the Harlem Renaissance. However, there were many things that contributed to her lack of success during her lifetime. One was that people were disturbed by the way she represented dialogue in her writing. She tried her best to show a direct an accurate picture of African American slang, and this was a very controversial idea, considered to be politically incorrect by most. Additionally, there was a scandal concerning eventually disproved allegations of Hurston molesting a child, and other people who published some unpopular opinions Hurston had concerning Brown v. Board of Education.

After Hurston died, writer Alice Walker was the main catalyst for causng new editions of her work to be printed and new interest generated in her writing. Some of Hurston's writing, such as a folk tale collection entitled Every Tongue Got to Tell,  was not found and published until decades after her death.

Hurston is now celebrated by a festival named after her, a national museum in her house,  and induction into the New York and Alabama halls of fame for writers. Her work is honored by writers, scholars, and critics, and read in schools all over the world.