"No matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you."
Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
Writer
Barnard 1928; GSAS 1934–35
Hurston combined literature with anthropology, employing indigenous dialects to tell the stories of people in her native rural Florida and in the Caribbean. She became one of the most widely read authors of the Harlem Renaissance but died penniless and forgotten, her eight books long out of print. Her reputation was resuscitated after Alice Walker's 1975 essay, "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston," led to rediscovery of novels such as Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934) and Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). Hurston also collaborated with Langston Hughes on the 1931 play Mule Bone, which was never performed during their lifetimes due to disagreements between them over authorship.
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