Zora Neale Hurston on Love and Life
Zora Neale Hurston’s name is synonymous with the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural blossoming of Black American music, art, and literature in the 1920s and ’30s. An acclaimed writer and anthropologist, Hurston is best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, now considered a classic of American literature.
Born in Notasulga, Alabama, in 1891, Hurston’s early childhood was one of constant movement and change. Her father, a pastor, moved the family to Eatonville, Florida, when she was three, and her mother died about 10 years after that. When her father remarried, Hurston was sent to live with different relatives, but Eatonville always felt like home to the writer, and it became the setting for many of her stories later on in life.
Throughout her career, Hurston’s writing centered the lives of Black people, often employing African American and Caribbean folklore in her writing. She wanted to portray her characters living lives full of joy, nuance, and ordinariness. In addition to writing books such as her 1934 debut novel, Jonah’s Gourd Vine, and her 1935 short story collection, Mules and Men, Hurston also penned plays and traveled to Jamaica and Haiti to conduct anthropological research for her writing..
In her lifetime, Hurston was often criticized by other Harlem Renaissance artists for catering to a predominantly white audience, for opposing integration, and for not being as outspoken as some of her peers when it came to issues of racial justice. Yet today, Hurston is heralded as a literary icon who made great strides for Black writers in the United States, always advocating for more visibility for Black creatives. Here, we’ve rounded up 13 poignant quotes from the writer across a wide range of topics, from spirituality to love and what it really means to be a Black woman in America.
