Zora Neale Hurston Research Paper
In 1973, Alice Walker, the author and poet, made a sentimental visit to the African American city of Eatonville, Florida. Her goal was to find the grave of a writer she greatly admired, Zora Neale
Hurston. Hurston, a major figure of the Harlem Renaissance, died in poverty in 1960 (“Hurston, Zora
Neale”). Walker found no grave or marker in Eatonville, Hurston’s hometown. Instead, she learned that her literary idol had been buried in an unmarked grave in a segregated cemetery in Fort Pierce, Florida.
She commissioned a headstone for the site that hailed Hurston as a genius of the South, a novelist, a folklorist, and, finally, an anthropologist.
It is significant that Alice Walker—poet, novelist, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in fiction— would add “folklorist” and …show more content…
The novel, in fact, contains so many folk sayings that
Robert Bone has claimed “[…] they are too nonfunctional, too anthropological […]” (127).
Most critics have agreed with Darryl Pinckney that Hurston’s “ear for the vernacular of folk speech is impeccable” (56). Even a critic in 1937 who found Hurston’s dialect “less convincing” than another writer’s suggested that Hurston’s rural dialect might be more realistic (Thompson). Her excellent ear and her “skill at transcribing” (Young 220) made the language in her first novel something new and therefore somewhat hard to read.
Some critics may have found her ear for speech impeccable, but several writers of Hurston’s time disapproved of her work. Zora Neale Hurston was in fact a controversial figure within the Harlem
Renaissance. She was attacked for her novels’ picture of black life, and this portrayal is another connection between her anthropological work and her fiction (Howard, “Just Being Herself” 156).
Hurston came to New York when the Harlem Renaissance was in full bloom. This
Hurston. Hurston, a major figure of the Harlem Renaissance, died in poverty in 1960 (“Hurston, Zora
Neale”). Walker found no grave or marker in Eatonville, Hurston’s hometown. Instead, she learned that her literary idol had been buried in an unmarked grave in a segregated cemetery in Fort Pierce, Florida.
She commissioned a headstone for the site that hailed Hurston as a genius of the South, a novelist, a folklorist, and, finally, an anthropologist.
It is significant that Alice Walker—poet, novelist, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in fiction— would add “folklorist” and …show more content…
The novel, in fact, contains so many folk sayings that
Robert Bone has claimed “[…] they are too nonfunctional, too anthropological […]” (127).
Most critics have agreed with Darryl Pinckney that Hurston’s “ear for the vernacular of folk speech is impeccable” (56). Even a critic in 1937 who found Hurston’s dialect “less convincing” than another writer’s suggested that Hurston’s rural dialect might be more realistic (Thompson). Her excellent ear and her “skill at transcribing” (Young 220) made the language in her first novel something new and therefore somewhat hard to read.
Some critics may have found her ear for speech impeccable, but several writers of Hurston’s time disapproved of her work. Zora Neale Hurston was in fact a controversial figure within the Harlem
Renaissance. She was attacked for her novels’ picture of black life, and this portrayal is another connection between her anthropological work and her fiction (Howard, “Just Being Herself” 156).
Hurston came to New York when the Harlem Renaissance was in full bloom. This