Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Ottenberg, Eve

Titel

Zora Neale Hurston's Lost Decade

Ist Teil von

• In These Times, 2011, Vol.35 (4), p.47

Ort / Verlag

Chicago: Institute for Public Affairs, Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

2011

Quelle

Nexis Uni

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• [Lynn Moylan] argues that regarding education, [Zora Neale Hurston] was a black separatist, and devotes pages to defending Hurston's diatribes against Brown v. The Board of Education. Though at first it may seem jarring, this is in fact one of the most nuanced sections of a muchneeded book, one that illuminates the last, nearly destitute years of a great writer's life, years previously cloaked in obscurity. These years have been "a period that might appear outwardly unprofitable," Hurston wrote in a 1957 letter. "But ... I have made phenomenal growth as a creative artist. ... I am not materialistic... If I do happen to die without money, somebody will bury me, though I do not wish it to be that way." Since her death, Hurston's reputation has received two major rehabilitations. The first was a 1975 Alice Walker essay in Ms. magazine, "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston," and the second the 2005 TV movie version of Their Eyes Were Watching God, produced by Oprah Winfrey and starring Halle Berry. Now that Hurston's place in the pantheon of American writers is secure, it is unsettling to see her in Zora Neale Hurstons Final Decade, going hat-in-hand to publishers and employers at an age when she should have been enjoying her retirement and resting on her laurels.