Zora Neale Hurston Accomplishments

Through the rise and fall of the Harlem Renaissance there were a variety of influential writers and poets that preached their dreams to the generations that would listen. These authors centered their writings, be it books, poems, or papers, on promoting equality for the black community. The Harlem community strives to tip the scales of progress, aspiring to rise above all others as a beacon of advancement and prosperity. Zora Neale Hurston had a different mindset when it came to expressing her ideas through writing. Hurston was not trying to bring one side higher, but instead balanced the scales and made everyone equal. Hurston wrote many books and papers on the idea that everyone was the same. As a writer Hurston identified that people do

Hurston did not stay quiet about the dream that she wanted to share with the country, even though it went against the current. Growing up as a small child, Hurston was always surrounded by people that looked just like her. The worries of growing up and being persecuted for the color of your skin was something that she never had to worry about. This is what life was like in Eatonville, Florida. Over the course of her youth, Hurston was raised around the ideals and culture that would later be seen in the Harlem Renaissance. Growing up Hurston was always different from her family and friends; unlike the others she was welcoming to the white tourists that passed through her little town. She would wait on the porch of her house, watching and interacting with the tourists. Hurston began to develop the mindset that would later help her create the stage that would help her write her most influential books. This habit was not confined to her small town. From “How it Feels to Be Colored Me” Hurston describes, “During this period, white people differed from being colored to me only in that they rode through town and never lived there.” Even at a young age Hurston saw the world in a different

From one of Hurston’s most known pieces “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” Hurston writes, “I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation. No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife” (Hurston, para 9). Throughout Hurston’s life, she never once looked down on herself because of her skin color. She now sees her brown skin as a disability within the world. Unlike others during this period that were ashamed of their skin color and blaming their problems on that, Hurston chose to ignore all of it and focus on her dream. She kept sharpening her oyster knife to one day use it to collect her pearls. Zora Neale Hurston was a monumental figure throughout the Renaissance