Zora Neale Hurston: podcast appearances and interviews

Zora Neale Hurston was an American writer, anthropologist, folklorist, and documentary filmmaker born on January 7, 1891. She portrayed racial struggles in the early 20th-century American South and conducted research on Hoodoo and Caribbean Vodou. Hurston published more than 50 short stories, plays, essays, an autobiography, and ethnographies. Her most well-known novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was published in 1937. She also authored ethnographic works such as Tell My Horse, which explored ethnomusicological methods of study, especially regarding communities of color, before formal disciplinary boundaries existed. Hurston's background and approach to anthropology contributed to the development of ethnography, literature, and Africana Studies. Born in Notasulga, Alabama, she moved with her family to Eatonville, Florida, in 1894, a setting she frequently depicted in her stories. During her early career, she studied at Barnard College and Columbia University, where she conducted ethnographic research focused on African-American and Caribbean folklore and their roles in community identity. Her work also addressed contemporary issues in the black community and she became a leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston’s publications include the folklore collection Mules and Men and novels such as Jonah's Gourd Vine and Moses, Man of the Mountain. She documented her research on rituals in Jamaica and Haiti in Tell My Horse. Although her work was not widely recognized during her lifetime, her reputation was revived posthumously, with her manuscript Every Tongue Got to Confess published in 2001 and her nonfiction Barracoon released in 2018.