Zora Neale Hurston: Genius of the South
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was perhaps one of the most prolific of the Harlem Renaissance writers, but she was also the most polarizing. To some of her contemporaries she was 'disconcerting'; to others, 'eccentric,' and even boastful and outrageous. As if a subtle critique, author Wallace Thurman cast her as "Sweetie Mae Carr," an effete, egotistical would-be artiste in Thurman's satiric novel, Infants of the Spring . To others, however, Hurston was a trail-blazer, an iconoclast, and later for Alice Walker, a 'spiritual mother.' No matter her reputation among Harlem Literati, she was one of the earliest African American female scholars to venture into post-Occupation Haiti to gather invaluable cultural material for her compilation, Tell My Horse . Later she would expose African American folklife to U.S. audiences in Mules and Men. Hurston was an intrepid and rigorous preserver and conveyer of Africana folklife and folk culture. Born i...