Discovering Zora: Top 10 Fun Facts About the Remarkable Life of Zora Neale Hurston

1. Hurston's Broadway debut

This ain't Hurston's first rodeo on the Great White Way: Zora Neale Hurston's play The Great Day, featuring her Bahamian ethnographic research and celebrating Black culture, made its debut on Broadway at the John Golden Theatre in 1932, but despite rave reviews, it never lassoed a producer for a long run.
Source => pbs.org

2. Anthropology superhero

If Zora Neale Hurston were a superhero, she'd be AnthroGirl: Leaping tall library shelves in a single bound, wielding enormous power in the world of folklore, and armed with a pen mightier than the sword: She was not only an exceptional author but also a skilled anthropologist, becoming the most significant collector of Afro-American folklore in America and contributing two books to immortalize it for generations to come.
Source => libraries.mit.edu

Did you know Harper Lee was on track to become a lawyer before she traded it for a writing career and created the iconic character Atticus Finch? Discover more intriguing facts about her life!

=> Fun Facts about Harper-Lee

3. Cher-like comeback

If Zora Neale Hurston were a comeback artist, she would put Cher's never-ending farewell tours to shame: Her magnum opus, "Their Eyes Were Watching God", first hit the literary scene with uproar in 1937, only to be resurrected and celebrated decades after her 1960 demise, all thanks to the legendary Alice Walker breathing new life into her Harlem Renaissance legacy.
Source => literaryladiesguide.com

4. Eatonville inspiration

Hold on to your pen and grab your fruity drink - we're going on a literary vacation to the land where eyes were watching God and the sun never sets: Zora Neale Hurston's hometown of Eatonville, Florida is the inspiration for her most famous works, including the classic novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God." As a bonus slice of history, Eatonville was one of the first all-African American communities to be incorporated in the United States.
Source => cityoffortpierce.com

5. Dialect diva

It turns out that Zora Neale Hurston was the original "dialect diva" – serving up sizzling linguistic realness that had her critics saying, "Girl, you better talk that talk!": Despite facing mixed reactions from contemporaries such as Alain Locke and Richard Wright, Hurston's use of dialect and folk speech in works like Their Eyes Were Watching God ultimately helped solidify her status as a prized figure in African-American literature, and after being reignited by Alice Walker in the 1970s, both her legacy and influence continue to flourish today.
Source => pbs.org

6. Forgotten playwright

Ladies and gentlemen, put your jazz hands together for the lesser-known queen of the stage: Zora Neale Hurston, the one-woman Broadway sensation who never quite got the chance to bask in the limelight! In an unexpected plot twist: This famed Harlem Renaissance writer and anthropologist also penned ten plays that lay forgotten in the Library of Congress until they were unearthed in the late 1990s, finally granting her the ovation she deserves for contributing to the formation of a "real Negro theater."
Source => loc.gov

7. Floridian Sherlock Holmes

Before she put the "lore" in folklore, Zora Neale Hurston moonlighted as a Floridian Sherlock Holmes, sleuthing through the mysteries of regional tunes and tall tales: This Harlem Renaissance luminary honed her skills on the Federal Writers' Project during the Great Depression, gathering folklore, music, and oral histories that later inspired her acclaimed literary works.
Source => loc.gov

8. Soviet cinema adventure

When the "Harlem Renaissance" gang tried to put on a Soviet show: Zora Neale Hurston, alongside Langston Hughes and Dorothy West, flew all the way to the Soviet Union in 1932 to be part of a film about race in America. Unfortunately, the project got canceled, but that didn't stop Hurston from sticking around in Russia for almost a year before she returned to New York with her head held high and pockets full of tales.
Source => time.com

9. Autobiography dance

Zora Neale Hurston must have mastered the cha-cha with her publisher while writing her autobiography, as they danced around edits, side-stepping libellous passages, and even tip-toeing past a relentless critique of American imperialism: "Dust Tracks on a Road" still managed to waltz straight into the 1943 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for its captivating literary contribution to race relations, despite being surrounded by more controversy than a heated game of "Guess Who?"
Source => en.wikipedia.org

10. Pre-smartphone culture capture

Before smartphones were whispering sweet nothings into our ears, Zora Neale Hurston was capturing the heartbeat of African American culture with a pen and a whole lot of moxie: As an anthropologist, folklorist, and writer, Hurston's 1934 debut novel, "Jonah's Gourd Vine," chronicled a plantation worker who became a preacher wrestling with his spiritual and sensual temptations, ultimately leaving readers enthralled by its complex portrayal of Black life in the American South and earning its place back on bookstore shelves through a 2008 HarperCollins reissue.
Source => literaryladiesguide.com