Orlando, Florida by James C. Clark

Author:James C. Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2013-12-10T16:00:00+00:00

Zora’s Home

IN HER LIFETIME, Zora Neale Hurston experienced some of the grandest highs and heartbreaking lows one person can have. She once wrote, “Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to ‘jump at de sun.’ We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.’ Hurston jumped at the sun but, in the end, returned to earth.

Zora Neale Hurston wrote about her experiences growing up in Eatonville. She shot to fame in the 1930s, but died broke and forgotten. Florida Photographic Collection.

She was born in Alabama but moved to the small village of Eatonville, outside Orlando, when she was an infant. She always claimed she was born in Eatonville, writing, “I’ve got a map of Florida on my tongue.”

She dropped out of school and went to work, ending up as a domestic in a white household. The woman she worked for arranged for her to finish high school and exposed her to books.

She was on her way, attending Howard University, Barnard College and Columbia University. Her first novel, Jonah’s Gourd Vine, received glowing reviews and established her as part of the Harlem Renaissance, a movement featuring leading African American writers and artists.

She followed with Mules and Men, which one critic called “the greatest book of African-American folklore ever written.” Her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is a young black woman’s coming of age in rural Florida.

She returned to Florida and faded into obscurity. She was falsely linked to two young boys, and her reputation was destroyed. “All that I have believed in has failed me,” she wrote.

She took a job as a maid in a south Florida home, but when the family found out that their maid was famous, she was fired. Alone and broke, she died in Fort Pierce in 1960.

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