Outrageous by nature, Zora Neale Hurston was a nonconformist who thought not in terms of race, but rather in terms of individuals. She felt that "nothing about a person's insides" could be revealed through race (Hurston, Dust Tracks 249). As a novelist, essayist, and anthropologist, she was a woman who wrote and spoke her mind. Through fact and fiction, she conveyed remarkable accounts of African-American heritage. Her unconventional writing style challenged mankind to recognize and understand the art and beauty of black culture; her central themes portrayed the vitality of black oral traditions, and the spiritual need of humans to be free (Roses 182).

Zora was born on January 7, in approximately 1891, and reared in the first incorporated, all-black community known as Eatonville, Florida. She was the fifth of eight children, born to Lucy Ann Potts and John Hurston. Her father acquired property and rose to prominence in the community as a carpenter, a Baptist minister, and a thrice-elected mayor. He was exasperated by his daughter's dauntless ways, particularly, her behavior around white people. After all, "It did not do for Negroes to have too much spirit" (Hurston, Dust Tracks 13). She was defended by her mother, a former schoolteacher, who encouraged Zora in her innovative endeavors.

Upon her mother's death in 1904, her father quickly remarried; Zora despised her stepmother. Hence, she lived with various relatives, and her schooling was sporadic. At the age of sixteen, she procured employment as a wardrobe girl with a theater group and traveled to Baltimore, where she attended Morgan College Preparatory School. After graduating in 1918, she enrolled at Howard University, where her first short story was published in the campus paper, The Stylus. Charles Johnson, the founder of Opportunity Magazine, requested and published several other of her short stories and persuaded her to move to New York. Thus, she found herself in the center of the Harlem Renaissance, the black literary and cultural movement of the 1920's and early 1930's. While in New York, she attained a scholarship to attend Barnard College, where she studied with anthropologist, Franz Boas. During her career, Hurston authored four novels, Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939), and Seraph on the Sewanee (1948); two collections of folklore, Mules and Men (1935), and Tell My Horse (1938); and an autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road (I942); as well as numerous plays, short stories, and essays. Although praised for contributing to the knowledge of folklore, her writings were highly criticized for their failure to address racism.

Toward the end of her life, Zora was devastated by a false charge of sexually molesting a young boy and the ensuing publicity by the black press. She wrote to a friend, "I care nothing for writing anything anymore ... My race has seen fit to destroy me without reason, and with the vilest tools conceived by man thus far" ("Zora Neale Hurston," 3). Overwhelmed, suffering from poor health, and with few financial resources, she was forced to enter the St. Lucie County Welfare Home in 1958. She died two years later, destitute and unrecognized by the literary community. She was buried in an unmarked grave in a segregated cemetery, the Garden of Heavenly Rest, in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Her most widely-acclaimed novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, renders the life story of Janie Crawford as related to her friend. As a young girl, she witnesses a revelation while on her back beneath a pear tree. "She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight" (Hurston, Their Eyes 10). Thus, Janie experiences a sexual awakening; she dreams of love and longs for her world to begin. However, those dreams are shattered when she is forced to marry Logan Killicks at the insistence of her grandmother. Her first marriage fails, as does the second to Jody Starks. When Janie falls in love with a rounder's son named Tea Cake, her "soul crawls out from its hiding place" (Hurston, Their Eygs, 122). However, when Tea Cake contracts rabies while protecting her, Janie is forced to take his life in order to save her own. Hence, after a life's journey spanning twenty-five years and three marriages, Janie ends up alone, but content to live with her memories and to tell her story, with Tea Cake as her guide, she found fulfillment in love and learned the value of her own identity.

Throughout her early life, Janie yearns for love and true companionship. Her grandmother, however, believes that she should marry for shelter and protection. Therefore, she arranges for Janie to wed Logan Killicks, an old man who owns sixty acres and a mule. Janie soon realizes that love does not come with marriage. Her husband stifles her dreams and imposes his own idea of living, that only through hard work could one gain material success. He views Janie as a servant and renders a life of drudgery consisting of endless chores such as chopping wood, shoveling manure, and plowing fields. Thus, when Jody Starks happens by, Janie seizes the opportunity to escape. They travel to the all-black town of Eatonville, where he buys land, builds a general store, and becomes mayor. However, Janie merely serves as a reflection of his position and wealth. Jody treats her as a possession and is intent on keeping her submissive. He refuses to let her participate in the exchange of tall tales with the townsfolk, forces her to bind her hair in a head rag, and abuses her verbally and physically.

Upon his death, she pursues a life with Vergible "Tea Cake" Woods, a traveling bluesman whose life is dedicated to joyful pursuits. With him, she finally experiences the love that evaded her first two marriages. Tea Cake does not see Janie as a workhorse or a status symbol, but as a companion. He encourages her independence by teaching her skills and praising her talents. They journey to the Florida Everglades, and work in its muck side by side. They also play checkers, fish under the moonlight, engage in small talk, and display their affection freely. He was her "dust-bearing bee." Through his guidance and support, Janie learns to trust and know her own mind. Tea Cake's violent death forces her to decide what she wants from life. She rejects the limitations imposed by her grandmother, "Nanny had taken the biggest thing God ever made, the horizon. . . and pinched it into such a little bit of a thing that she could tie it about her granddaughter's neck tight enough to choke her" (Hurston, Their Eyes 85). Although alone, Janie possesses a wealth of experience and a self-realization which brings her peace. Ultimately, she attains happiness and fulfillment by relying on her own internal strength.

Zora's ability as a folklorist, to weave a creative, spellbinding story, is apparent. The novel asserts and exalts black culture, for it portrays southern blacks as a community, comprised of a people, vital and diverse. Through the use of vernacular and imagery, the characters depicted are colorful and vivacious. Janie is a powerful and independent black woman, and her story is inspiring. She followed her own path and rejected security in favor of adventure and passion. Thus, she defied what was expected of her and overcame life's obstacles by relying on herself. A feeling of dignity and triumph remains when the tale is complete. As stated by her friend, Pheoby, "Ah done growed ten feet higher from jus' listenin' tuh you, Janie. Ah ain't satisfied with mahself no mo" (182).

Throughout her career, Zora was severely criticized for her outspoken, unconventional views, mainly by her male contemporaries. She was discarded as a serious fiction writer and her voice dismissed, due to her failure to address the exploitation of racism. Sterling Brown, a distinguished Afro-American artist of the twentieth century, felt that Mules and Men was not bitter enough, as it did not depict the harsher side of black life in the South (Hemenway 93). Alain Locke, dean of black scholars and critics during the Harlem Renaissance, felt that Their Eyes was inconsistent with the more serious trends of the time. He indicated that Zora should get past oversimplification and "come to grips with motive fiction and social document fiction" (Locke 18). The most damaging criticism was written by Richard Wright, an influential and well-known black writer of the leftist magazine, New Masses:

Miss Hurston voluntarily continues in her novel the tradition which was forced upon the Negro in the theater, that is, the minstrel technique that makes the 'white folks' laugh. The sensory sweep of her novel carries no theme, no message, no thought. In the main, her novel is not addressed to the Negro, but to a white audience whose chauvinistic tastes she knows how to satisfy (Wright 16).

Hurston refused to accept the idea that "racism had reduced black people to mere ciphers, to beings who only react to an omnipresent racial oppression, whose culture is 'deprived' where different" (Hurston, Dust Tracks 189). In Moses, Man of the Mountain, she wrote that "freedom was something internal ... The man himself must make his own emancipation" (291). In response to the negative criticisms rendered by her male colleagues, she replied in an essay entitled How It Feels to Be Colored Me:

I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it ... No, I do not weep at the world -- I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife (Wall 208).

Contemporary critics, among them Alice Walker and June Jordan, refuted the earlier charges and praised Their Eyes for its affirmation of black culture. Walker states:

It speaks to me as no novel, past or present, has ever done; the dialect spoken by the characters is simply beautiful. There is enough self-love in that one book -- love of community, culture, traditions -- to restore a world. Or create a new one. There is no book more important to me than this one (Walker, "A Cautionary" 65).

Jordan writes:

Unquestionably, Their Eyes Were Watching God is the prototypical Black novel of affirmation; it is the most convincing and exemplary novel of Blacklove that we have. Period. But the book gives us more: the story unrolls a fabulous, written-film of Blacklife freed from the constraints of oppression; here we may learn Black possibilities of ourselves if we could ever escape the hateful and alien context that has so deeply disturbed and mutilated our rightly efflorescence -- as people (Jordan 18).

Zora Neale Hurston was a woman ahead of her time; she was an individual that was not afraid to voice her opinion. After digesting Their Eyes Were Watching God, I was anxious to read more of her work. Her exceptional ability to craft a tale, was evident in all that I read. Upon learning of the unfavorable criticisms much of her writing received, I was astounded. The use of dialect in her writing did not ridicule black society; it was an effective tool which breathed life into the story and its characters. Through their harsh criticisms, her peers exhibited the very trait they were so intent on eradicating, that of oppression. The fact that her works failed to address racism, in no way diminished her talent. She simply refused to dignify discrimination by acknowledging its existence. Instead, she stressed the need for individualism, and embraced her heritage by conveying and retaining the art of storytelling.

The feminist movement and a rise in black consciousness led to a rediscovery and reassessment of Hurston's works by a new generation of black writers, most notably that of Alice Walker, who viewed Zora's fate as an insult:

We are a people, A people do not throw their geniuses away. If they do, it is our duty as witnesses for the future to collect them again for the sake of our children. If necessary, bone by bone (Walker, "A Cautionary" 69).

In 1973, Walker visited the sight believed to be Zora's grave, and erected a tombstone which reads, "Zora Neale Hurston, A Genius of the South, Novelist, Folklorist Anthropologist 1901 - 1960" (Walker, "Looking" 116). Accordingly, Zora's empowering legacy has been reclaimed, and her works restored to their rightful place among the literary world. Through Zora's strength, joy, and creativity, her readers have also managed to "touch the four comers of the horizon" (Hurston, Dust Tracks 265).

Works Cited

Hemenway, Robert E. "That Which the Soul Lives By." Modern Critical Views:
    Zora Neale Hurston. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1996. 83-95.

Hurston, Zora Neale. Dust Tracks on a Road. New York: HarperCollins, 1996.
    ---. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper & Row, 1990.

Jordan, June. American Women Fiction Writers. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York:
    Chelsea House, 1997. 17-19.

Locke, Alain. Zora Neale Hurston: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Eds. Henry
    Louis Gates, Jr. and K. A_ Appiah. New York: Amistad, 1993. 18.

Roses, Lorraine Elana, and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph. Harlem Renaissance and
    Beyond. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1990.

Walker, Alice. "A Cautionary Tale and a Partisan View." Modern Critical Views:
    Zora Neale Hurston. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. 63-69.
   ---. "Looking for Zora." Modern Critical Views: Zora Neale Hurston. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. 107-122.

Wall, Cheryl A_ "Zora Neale Hurston." Afrigan American Writers. Eds. Lea Baechler
    and A. Walton Litz. New York: MacMillan, 1991. 205-218.

Wright, Richard. Zora Neale Hurston: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Eds.
    Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K. A. Appiah. New York: Amistad, 1993. 16-17.

"Zora Neale Hurston." DISCovering Authors Modules CD-ROM. Detroit:
    Gale Research, 1996.