The life, work, and legacy of one of the twentieth century’s most published African American women.
 
This book explores the life and legacy of Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960), the most-published African American woman of the first half of the twentieth century. Famous today as the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston was also an anthropologist and a folklorist. In this new biography, Cheryl Hopson casts Hurston as a modern woman on the move, particularly as a collector of stories in and around the Jim Crow South. Hopson details her rejection by the Harlem Renaissance as well as her recovery by Black feminists such as Alice Walker years after her death. The result is an accessible and fresh account of the celebrated writer’s life and work.

Cheryl R. Hopson is associate professor of English and African American studies at Western Kentucky University. She is the author of the poetry collection In Case You Get This.