Zora Neale Hurston

An African-American woman searches for a fulfilling relationship through two loveless marriages and finally finds it in the person of Tea Cake, an itinerant laborer and gambler. Their Eyes Were Watching God, an American classic, is a luminous and haunting novel about Janie Crawford, a Southern black woman in the 1930s whose journey from a free-spirited girl to a woman of independence and substance has inspired writers and readers for close to seventy...

In 1925, Zora Neale Hurston was living in New York as a fledgling writer. This collection of stories, found in archives after her death, reveal African American folk culture in Harlem in the 1920s. This book includes eight of Hurston's "lost" Harlem gems.

Mules and Men is a treasury of black America's folklore as collected by a famous storyteller and anthropologist who grew up hearing the songs and sermons, sayings and tall tales that have formed an oral history of the South since the time of slavery. Returning to her hometown of Eatonville, Florida, to gather material, Zora Neale Hurston recalls "a hilarious night with a pinch of everything social mixed with the storytelling." Set intimately within...

In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation's history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo's firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave...

'Sweat' is an early feminist short story by Harlem Renaissance writer, Zora Neale Hurston. This pocket-sized tale presents the contrasting lives of a married couple: the sweat and toil of Delia and the leisure and privilege of her husband, Sykes. Delia works incredibly long hours as a washerwoman, making sure that she earns enough to pay rent for her and her husband's home, while also ensuring the house is clean and there is food on the table....

Zora Neale Hurston's tragic 1926 play Color Struck is a thought-provoking commentary on colorism within the Black community. Set in Florida in 1900, Colour Struck begins on a Jim Crow train carriage. Barely making the train, Emma and John's journey commences with an argument. Emma saw John speaking to a lighter-skinned Black woman, Effie, and was immediately jealous, assuming he was flirting. Throughout the play Emma continues to display animosity...

Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston explores a battle between physical and moral strength in this pocket-sized short story, 'Spunk'. Set in an all-Black community in rural America, this short story poses the question of whether moral strength is more powerful than physical strength. Spunk Banks is described as a 'giant'. He is unafraid of anything and when he openly flaunts his affair with Lena Kanty, Joe Kanty's wife, the other men in...

Born to parents who fled slavery and the Trail of Tears, Magnolia Flower is a girl with a vibrant spirit. Not to be deterred by rigid ways of the world, she longs to connect with others, who too long for freedom. She finds this in a young man of letters who her father disapproves of. In her quest to be free, Magnolia must make a choice and set off on a journey that will prove just how brave one can be when leading with one's heart. The acclaimed...