Social location is comprised of the variables that contribute to ones identity. Gender, race, class, sexuality, religion, and geographic location, all factor into a social location. Certain elements of one's identity may confer more or less power and privilege due to the conditions of the time and place one lives in. For an author, this can translate into whether one has access to an audience, how the public receives and interprets work, how the author is regarded and treated personally, and to what degree that work is successful critically and commercially.
Zora Neale Hurston was a woman of spirit and independence. For an an African American girl born at the height of lynching and anti-black violence in the United States to become a unique voice in literary history is a testament to the power of her personality and intelligence. As a black woman in the early twentieth century, Hurston,though a born story teller, was not an obvious candidate to succeed (in terms of literature and academia, if not financially) as spectacularly as she did. Valerie Boyd, author of Hurston's biography Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston writes that Zora's dream of becoming an author was, "...revolutionary at a time when most black women labored as maids, cooks, or washer-women (p.88)".
Literary Successand Life
Hurston first publishing success occurred when her short story "Drenched in Light" was published in 1924 by Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, the magazine of the Urban League, a key venue for writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance is a period (1917 -1935) in which black Americans who migrated north to escape southern racial violence expressed their culture in "an explosion" of artistic expression centered in Harlem New York. Literature, art, and music, fueled by the desire to celebrate black culture, and the demand for political rights, flourished. Zora Neale Hurston became a key figure in this movement. This movement as not only the result of societal pressures that prompted African Americans to relocate to the north for jobs and to flee violence. The Urban League's Charles S. Johnson of Opporutunity Magazine held literary competitions with cash prizes (Zora winning big, if only second prizes for her play Color Struck and her short story "Spunk". (Other black taste makers, organizations such as the NAACP, and magazine editors such as Alain Locke also influenced and promoted black talent.) Her appearance at the awards dinner soon gained Hurston the attention of what in the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries would have been known as patrons. Annie Nathan Meyer, a Barnard College trustee, was inspired by the emerging talent to secure her funding and and support her entrance to the school. Meyer, Fannie Hurst and Carl Van Vechten, other wealthy white persons interested in investing in black talent, were termed by Hurston "Negrotarians", a clever phrase that touched on the tensions inherent in the relationships between black artists and white sponsors. Like authors from the past, Hurston felt compelled to ingratiate herself to her patrons, and as Boyd notes, was not sure of what was expected of her in return (102). Hurst, a popular and successful writer, "opened doors" for Hurston (Boyd, p.107).
Hurston continued through out the 1920s and early 30's to study anthropology and write short stories. After the publication of the "The Gilded Six-Bits" she received inquiries from four different publishers about whether she had novel length material. Settling on Lippincott, she answered in the affirmative even though she hadn't written a word! Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934) was the result. Mules and Men (1935) followed. Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), her most enduring and significant work of fiction was written in Haiti in seven weeks. Despite this wave of productivity and success, Hurston still depended on support from patrons, grants for her folklore research (such as a Guggenheim fellowship in 1934) and various jobs, teaching etc. Boyd notes that by the 1930's, Hurston faced many obstacles as a black woman writer. Her financial advances and compensation for her work lagged far behind those of white writers, such as Fannie Hurst (p.249). Hurston often lived life on the edge of financial ruin, with royalties from publication sometimes saving her from eviction. She continued to work as a writer and anthropologist, college professor, a journalist, a consultant for Paramount Pictures, and later as a librarian, substitute teacher and a maid. At the end of her life she labored on a novel about Herod the Great, but was in such financial hardship she was forced to apply for welfare. She died of hypertensive heart disease in her native Florida on January 28, 1960.
Place and Writing
Eatonville Florida
Hurston's sense of home and place were powerful influences on her art and personality. The child of a Baptist minister and one time town mayor, Zora grew up in Eastonville Florida, an incorporated black town. Until her move to Jacksonville to attend school following the family upheaval caused by her mother's death, Hurston claimed she had no knowledge of what it meant to be a "colored girl". Because her home town was totally independent and its citizens were all African American, Hurston never truly experienced segregation until she left it as a young teen. Her experiences in Eatonville inspired her strong sense of self, confidence and her story telling, as well as her interest in black folklore. She returned there to study the area's folktales and songs. In 1938 for example, she recorded and gathered folk tales for the Federal Writer's Project of the WPA. She drew on the people and place of her youth to create memorable characters. Eatonville reappeared in her fiction as a setting and inspiration repeatedly.
The Caribbean: The Bahamas, Jamaica and Haiti
Hurston traveled to the Caribbean several times to do anthropology field work and to study the folktales, dances, religious practices and culture of the people there. She published her scholarly work in academic journals. Her experience of a powerful hurricane in the Bahamas inspired the climatic conclusion in Their Eyes Were Watching God, which she wrote in Haiti. 1938's Tell My Horse was the result of her time in Jamaica.
Harlem
Valerie Boyd writes in Wrapped in Rainbows that Hurston felt safe and free to be completely herself for the first time since Eatonville when she made her home in Harlem. It was "fun to be a Negro" in the Harlem of the 1920s. Surrounded by artists, musicians, writers and intellectuals, Zora shined and thrived. Among the "New Negro" writers, she was challenged and presented with the opportunity to discuss art and politics freely and to develop her craft in a "nearly all-Negro millieu (Boyd, p.93).
To learn more about place and environment in the life of Zora Neale Hurston, click on the map or link below to access the map's interactive features. Click on each place name on the menu on the left for images and details.