20 Oct
2026
Some writers spend their lives trying to escape the place they came from. Zora Neale Hurston did the opposite. She carried her hometown with her everywhere and made its voices, stories and humor the heart of her work. Today she is celebrated as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century, and her story begins in a small town in central Florida.
Hurston was born in Alabama, but she grew up in Eatonville, Florida, near Orlando. Eatonville was one of the first incorporated all-Black towns in the United States. In a time when segregation shaped nearly every part of Black life in the South, Eatonville was a place where Black residents governed themselves and ran their own community.
That setting mattered. Hurston grew up surrounded by Black people living full, complex lives on their own terms. She listened to the storytelling and talk of the people around her, and those voices became the raw material for much of what she would later write. Eatonville still exists today, and it remains proud of its history. The town holds an annual festival in her honor.
Hurston left Florida and eventually studied at Barnard College in New York, and she trained in anthropology with the well-known anthropologist Franz Boas of Columbia University. She was also part of the creative world of the Harlem Renaissance.
Her training gave her a new way to look at the culture she had grown up in. Instead of treating Black Southern folk traditions as something to leave behind, she saw them as a rich body of knowledge worth recording and respecting. She traveled back through the South, including her home state of Florida, collecting folktales, songs, sayings and customs. Her approach stood out. She was not an outsider looking in. She came from the kind of community she studied, which helped people trust her with their stories.
Her book Mules and Men (1935) gathered much of that folklore. She later worked on Florida projects for the Federal Writers' Project during the Great Depression, documenting more of the state's culture.
Hurston's research did not stop at the borders of the United States. She also traveled to the Caribbean, collecting folklore and studying religious practices in Jamaica and Haiti. That work became Tell My Horse, published in 1938.
For readers with roots in the Caribbean, this part of her life is a reminder of how closely connected Black cultures across the region are. Jonathan Anthony Burkett, who was born in Miami and raised in Westmoreland, Jamaica, by his grandparents, has his own roots in Jamaica.
Hurston's best-known novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was published in 1937. It follows Janie Crawford, a Black woman in Florida searching for love and for her own voice, and part of it takes place in Eatonville itself.
The novel is known for its rich use of Southern Black speech and for centering a woman's inner life. When it first appeared, it received mixed reactions, including criticism from some fellow writers. Its reputation grew enormously in later decades, and today it is widely read in schools and universities. Some of her other works include:
Despite her achievements, Hurston's later years were difficult, and her work fell out of print. She died in Fort Pierce, Florida, in 1960, and was buried in an unmarked grave.
Interest in her work was revived in large part by the writer Alice Walker. In 1975, Walker published an essay, "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston," in Ms. magazine, describing her search for Hurston's grave and calling attention to her legacy. Walker had a marker placed at the grave. Her essay helped spark new interest, and Hurston's books returned to readers.
Today Hurston is honored in Eatonville and across Florida. Her life shows that the stories of ordinary people in small towns can become great literature, and that a voice can be silenced for a while without being lost forever.
Hurston believed the voices of her community were worth preserving. Your family's stories, sayings and memories are worth preserving too. Write them down, record your elders and share them with the next generation. Ask a grandparent about the games they played, the foods they grew up eating or the stories they heard as children. Write down their words the way they said them. That was Hurston's gift: she listened closely and took everyday speech seriously.
If you love stories rooted in real life, explore Jonathan Anthony Burkett's books, including his memoir, on the Books page.
Account
Cart