The Romantic Spirit of the Harlem Renaissance: Zora Neale
Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) grew up in Eatonville, Florida,
the "first incorporated black community in America" (Wall 376).
Perhaps her isolation from white racism and discrimination
during her childhood and her mother's encouragement to "jump at
da sun" contributed to her strong sense of self and her audacity
in crossing racial, social, and gendered boundaries (Wall 376).
Indeed, in exploring Hurston's life and experiences, it is
difficult to believe that Hurston herself discerned any
boundaries attempting to be foisted on her. Hurston describes
her literary aesthetics as:
Every phase of Negro life is highly dramatized. No matter how
joyful or how sad the case there is sufficient poise for drama.
Everything is acted out. Unconsciously for the most part of
course. There is an impromptu ceremony always ready for every
hour of life. No little moment passes unadorned. (Wall 163)
In her four novels, Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), Their
Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Moses, Man of the
Mountain (1939), and Seraph on the Suwanee (1948); in
her two works of ethnography, Mules and Men (1935) and
Tell My Horse (1938); a memoir, Dust Tracks on a
Road (1942); and "more than fifty published short stories,
essays, and plays" Hurston worked to recreate "the sense of
drama and will to adorn" that she found in the language of
African Americans (Wall).
But Hurston did not limit herself to dramatizing Negro life; she
also dramatized herself. Her contemporaries believed Hurston to
be ten years younger than what she was. Her ability to pass off
her age exhibits her extraordinary skill in 'acting.' She had
the ability to pass back and forth between high and low culture,
black or white. I do not mean to imply that she could 'pass' for
white, or that she did so. I mean that she could adapt herself
to the manners of high society, middle class society, or working
class society with no apparent difficulty. Wall describes many
instances of Hurston's crossing boundaries, too many to narrate
here. But the anecdotes of Hurston's personal life clearly show
she is unafraid, and what is more, she is unabashed to "go where
no [woman] has gone before" {Wall}
Tragically for Hurston, once the Negro was 'out of vogue', she
experienced, as did most of her fellow artists, a swift decline
in fortune. Although Hurston continued to write until her death,
she largely went unpublished. She ended her life where she
began: in domestic service. At the time of her death in 1960,
none of her works were in print; likewise with Jessie Fauset and
Nella Larsen (Wall 204). The only person of the Harlem
Renaissance who "truly enjoyed a lengthy career" was Langston
Hughes (Wintz 230).
Bibliography
Wall, Cheryl A. Women of the Harlem Renaissance.
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995.
Wintz, Cary D. Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance.
Houston: Rice University Press, 1988.