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Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston (born 1903 January 7 in Eatonville, Florida) was an African-American folklorist/writer. Her controversial second novel, Their Eyes were Watching God (1937), brings her wide acclaim.
"I do not weep at the world — I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife."
She was the first black graduate of Barnard College in NY, she published two collections of folklore as well as three novels during the Harlem Renaissance. Her exploration of black female character influence a generation of writers. But after Their Eyes were Watching God, Hurston began to offend her condescending white patrons by refusing to grovel. By 1959, as publishers rejected her work, she was reduced to working as a maid. Evicted from her home, a stroke landed her in a welfare home, where she died in 1960.
