Zora Neale Hurston Powerpoint 5z438

Zora Neale

Hurston Picture for US Postal Stamp, 2003

Early Life • 1891 – 1960 • I “grew like a gourd and yelled bass like a gator.” • Notasulga, Alabama • Eatonville, Florida • Father: carpenter, preacher, mayor • Mother: died 1904 “jump at the sun.”

Education and Career

• • • • • • •

Howard University (1920) Harlem Renaissance 1927: founded Fire! Barnard College Columbia University Anthropology and Folklore Teacher, librarian, and domestic

Sweat • Short story published in 1926. • “Sweat” tells the story of a domestically abused, religiously devout laundress and her adulterous, deadbeat husband. • The dominant theme is good versus evil, but the story also incorporates the themes of hard work versus laziness and fate.

Continue.. • Main protagonists Delia Jones and her husband Sykes. • Throughout the piece, Delia’s character is associated with symbols of purity and virtue, such as her church attendance, her laundry washing and her loyalty.

• Sykes represents vice through his extramarital affairs, his loafing and his violence toward Delia.

Early Critical Reception of Sweat •

Debbie C. Hallace goes on to say in her book Forming our own Thoughts, “It shall be that movement of verbal communication that ‘talking back,’ will be no mere signal of hollow letters and characters that is the appearance of our association from thing to issue” (Hallace 11).

• In a criticism article written by Stephanie Calcker, “Zora Neale Hurston had the belief that the resist with racial discrimination is sufficient for blacks powers to the thought that the final and last object wanted by black men at that time was to put below and deeper down by the black women” ( Calcker 201).

Other Works • • • • • • •

Jonah’s Gourd Vine, 1934 [1991] Mules and Men, 1935 Their Eyes Were Watching God 1937 Tell My Horse, 1938 Moses, Man of the Mountain, 1939 Dust Tracks on a Road, 1942 Seraph on the Suwanee, 1948