Zora Neal Hurston

Interior: Coin & Book with EyeHer masterpiece novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God" Zora Neal Hurston Concisus GenusAn author of 7 books and more than 50 articles and short stories, a playwright, anthropologist and folklorist, Zora Neal Hurston was called the “Queen of the Renaissance.” One of 8 children, she was born in 1891 and grew up in the idyllic town of Eatonville, Florida, incorporated in 1886 as the first self-governed, all-black city in America. Her mother died when Hurston was 9, when her father, a well-respected reverend and mayor, sent her away to school. By age 14, she was living on her own. Hurston was hired as a maid to a cast member of an acting troupe. The 18 months she spent with them would be among her fondest memories. With a new sense of worldliness, she left the troupe, graduated high school, and attended Howard University, where she began to write. By 1925, she caught the interest of leading figures in the Harlem Renaissance. That year she moved to New York C