Zora Neale Hurston Accomplishments

During the 1920s, there was a period that was called the Harlem Renaissance, during which African Americans got the opportunity to be creative and express themselves through music and art. Langston Hughes and Louis Armstrong were a few of the famous people who came from this period in the 1920s. Another famous person that came out of the Harlem Renaissance was Zora Neale Hurston, a multi-talented African American woman who wrote stories that described the life and struggles of the 1920s through the stories she wrote. Hurston was an American writer, who was able to connect to the hearts of most people from all kinds of different races and religions during the period. Even today, her readers still feel the connection Hurston was trying to make

“Hurston became the most successful and most significant black woman writer of the first half of the 20th century. Over a career that spanned more than 30 years, she published four novels, two books of folklore, an autobiography, numerous short stories, and several essays, articles and plays” ("Zora Neale Hurston." The Official Website of Zora Neale Hurston). One of the most famous and a accomplishment was a novel that she had written called, Their Eyes Were Watching God, which received great praise. “In Their Eyes Were Watching God, the novel is a brilliant study of black folk and their language, their stories, and their mannerisms. All of this works symbolically as a measure of the characters ' integrity and freedom, which in turn demonstrates a contrast to the image of the carefree, ‘happy darky’ that prevailed in the fiction of many American novelists” ("Zora Neale Hurston." Notable Black American Women). In the novel, Hurston explores the gender roles of African American women during this time period. It follow the story of a young lady named Janie, who was struggling to fit in the world. She a very beautiful lady who had gone through three marriages by the time she reached the age of fifty. With this novel, Hurston got people talking about the

For example she did struggle with writing in general. "Hurston was struggling to make literature out of the Eatonville experience. It was her unique subject, and she was encouraged to make it the source of her art." ("Zora Neale Hurston." Contemporary Black Biography). Hurston, like many writers, had struggled with her work. The subjects she wrote about were great, but she struggled to put them into words so the readers would understand what she was trying to get across to them about the black community and the struggles of being a woman during that time period. She would take long periods of time just sitting in her bedroom planning to figuring out the words to write with. She even did it when she was at parties. When there was a party going on in the living room, she would be writing in the bedroom. ("Zora Neale Hurston." The Official Website of Zora Neale Hurston). Hurston, along with many other writers, endured a lack of funds from financial reward and funds from contest she won from, to write these books. Even though she wrote four novels and many short stories, but still she never got the money she earned to make a living. “Still, Hurston never received the financial rewards she deserved. (The largest royalty she ever earned from any of her books was $943.75.) So when she died on Jan. 28, 1960--at age 69, after suffering a stroke--her neighbors in Fort Pierce, Florida, had to