Handy African American History Answer Book by Jessie Carney Smith

Author:Jessie Carney Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Visible Ink Press
Published: 2014-03-04T05:00:00+00:00

Best remembered for her acclaimed 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston was also a short story writer, folklorist, and anthropologist.

Hurston’s career began to slide in the 1950s, forcing her to take a series of menial jobs in Florida’s small towns. After suffering a stroke in 1959, she was confined to Saint Lucie County Welfare Home in Fort Pierce, Florida, and she died in poverty on January 28, 1960. Writer Alice Walker rediscovered Hurston’s work in 1973, placed a headstone at the approximate site of her unmarked grave, and arranged Hurston festivals to be held regularly in Eatonville to celebrate her life and work. The Zora Neale Hurston Festival, held in Eatonville each year, now honors the author’s life and work. Hurston’s play Polk County resurfaced in 1997 at the Library of Congress and was produced at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. Between 1925 and 1944, Hurston had deposited typescripts of ten of her unpublished and unproduced plays at the Library of Congress for copyright protection. Once rediscovered in 1997, these works were placed in the library’s Manuscripts, Music, and Rare Books and Special Collections division. Hurston is celebrated for her writings, which include her perspectives as a black woman, feminist, anthropologist, and a keeper of the culture.

What black writer was the first to publish a detective novel in book form?

In 1932 Rudolph Fisher (1897–1934) became the first black writer to publish a detective novel in book form, The Conjure Man Dies, which revealed Fisher’s medical and scientific knowledge within the storyline. The Federal Theater Project at the Lafayette Theater in Harlem produced his work as a play posthumously in 1936. In 2001 it was brought back to life and ran through February 11 at the Henry Street Settlement on the Lower East Side of New York City. Fisher was born in Washington, D.C., and earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Brown University. He received his medical degree from Howard University Medical School in 1924. The next year Fisher continued his medical education at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. After that he trained for years in bacteriology, pathology, and roentgenology, becoming a radiologist. Fisher was said to have been conflicted over his involvement in two disparate professions—medicine and creative writing—but managed to do well in both. He wrote a number of very good short stories and two novels (including The Walls of Jericho, 1928), in addition to his detective novel. He was considered one of the wittiest of the Harlem Renaissance group. Fisher died of cancer in 1934, while he worked on a dramatization of The Conjure Man Dies. He was only thirty-seven years old.

What were the lasting effects of Harlem Renaissance literature on American and African-American culture?

There were numerous programs and developments in African-American culture that were influenced by the Harlem Renaissance and its giants. These include the emergence of Black Studies programs in black and mainstream institutions and a study of the works of Harlem Renaissance scholars, sometimes with separate

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.