Zora! Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Zora Photo

  Introduction

  1. "Servants Are Servants"

  2. "The Moon Ran After Me"

  3. "In Sorrow's Kitchen"

  4. "The Golden Stairs"

  5. "A Toe-Hold on the World"

  6. 1927

  7. "Most Gorgeous Possibilities"

  8. "You, LANGSTON HUGHES, Cut Me to the Quick"

  9. "It Cost $1.83 to Mail, and I Did Not Have It"

  10. "I Wrote It in Seven Weeks": Their Eyes Were Watching God

  11. "I Shall Keep Trying"

  12. "I Had Exactly Four Pennies"

  13. "Nothing Is Destructible": The Rebirth of Zora Neale Hurston

  Two "Lies" (Folktales) Collected in Florida By Zora Neale Hurston

  Zora Time Line

  Source Notes

  Bibliography

  Image Credits

  Index

  Clarion Books

  215 Park Avenue South

  New York, New York 10003

  Copyright © 2012 by Judith Bloom Fradin and Dennis Brindell Fradin

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  Clarion Books is an imprint of

  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  www.hmhbooks.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Fradin, Judith Bloom.

  Zora!: the life of Zora Neal Hurston / Judith Bloom Fradin and Dennis Brindell Fradin.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 978-0-547-00695-6

  1. Hurston, Zora Neale—Juvenile literature. 2. Authors, American—20th century—Biography—Juvenile literature. 3. African Americanauthors—Biography—Juvenile literature. 4. African American women—Biography—Juvenile literature. 5. Folklorists—United States—Biography—Juvenile literature. I. Fradin, Dennis B. II. Title.

  PS3515.U789Z69 2012

  813'.52—dc23 [B]

  2011025949

  eISBN 978-0-547-53415-2

  v1.0812

  For our lovely grand children—Aaron, Anna, Benjamin, Olivia, and Ariana Fradin and Shalom and Dahlia Richard

  Upon her return to New York, Zora demonstrated the Crow Dance she learned in the Bahamas.

  Introduction

  "I'll Say My Say and Sing My Song"

  FROM BEGINNING TO END, Zora Neale Hurston's life was extraordinary. She packed so much into her sixty-nine years that we zmight even say her "lives" were extraordinary.

  Zora spent her childhood in the all-black town of Eatonville, Florida. Because she didn't experience prejudice until she left Eatonville as a teenager, Zora grew up proud to be black and unaware of racism. As a little girl, she was so confident of her specialness that she believed the moon followed her wherever she went. Zora's confidence remained with her all her life and sustained her through many tough times.

  Zora decided to make writing her career. She traveled through the American South, as well as the islands of the West Indies, collecting folklore, which she transformed into nonfiction books. She also wrote novels. Despite numerous rejections, Zora eventually had seven of her books published during her lifetime, as well as many stories and articles.

  Zora was passionate about her writing. She broke off her relationship with a man to whom she referred as "the real love affair of my life" because he wanted her to give up writing and marry him. She didn't mind the marrying part—she was married and divorced three times—but forsaking her writing career was out of the question. Zora was also known to fight with reviewers who criticized her work, and she ended her close friendship with the author Langston Hughes over a literary dispute.

  None of Zora's books sold more than a few thousand copies while she was alive, and as a result she didn't earn much of a living from her writing. The largest royalty check she ever received from the sale of her books was only $943.75, and she earned such a meager income from her books that she had to take on other jobs. At various times she worked as a maid, doctor's receptionist, personal assistant to a singer, waitress, caretaker to an invalid, manicurist, secretary, college drama teacher, collector of folk music, editor for a government publication, Hollywood script consultant, lecturer, college literature teacher, paid political worker, explorer, ghostwriter, newspaper reporter, librarian, and high school English teacher.

  Often Zora could barely support herself, and sometimes she descended into abject poverty. One day in March 1951, she counted "four pennies" as all the money she had in the world. There were times when she had to pawn her typewriter just to buy groceries. To make matters more difficult, she suffered from a long list of illnesses, including heart and intestinal ailments.

  Through it all, Zora continued to write, never losing faith that great suecess waited just around the corner. Almost until the day she suffered a fatal stroke in a Florida charity home, she worked on a book that had occupied her for most of the 1950s, fervently believing that it would revive her career. It didn't, but more than a decade after her death Zora was rediscovered by a new generation of readers who admired her writing and her unconquerable spirit.

  1. "Servants Are Servants"

  ON JANUARY 15, 1950, Zora Neale Hurston celebrated her fiftyninth birthday. By then she was one of the nation's most accomplished authors. She had four novels to her credit, including her best-known work, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston had also published two books of folklore, an autobiography, and numerous short stories and articles. She had won awards, spoken at universities, and been friends with Langston Hughes, Fannie Hurst, and other leading authors of her era.

  Zora's books didn't sell very well during her lifetime, however. The result was that she was broke—or nearly so—most of her adult life. She was so impoverished in early 1950 that she took a job as a maid in the ritzy Miami suburb of Rivo Alto Island. For thirty dollars a week, plus food and a room in which to sleep, Hurston cooked and cleaned for the Burritts. The white couple liked the middle-aged black servant, but they didn't suspect that their "girl Zora" was a noted author until Mrs. Burritt was leafing through the March 18, 1950, Saturday Evening Post. Beginning on page 22 of that popular magazine was a story titled "Conscience of the Court" by Zora Neale Hurston.

  Zora was dusting off the bookshelves in the next room when she was summoned to talk to Mrs. Burritt. Yes, Zora admitted, she had written the Saturday Evening Post story. Mrs. Burritt asked Zora more questions and was astonished to learn that the woman who washed her family's floors and cooked their meals had taught college and had worked as a movie writer in Hollywood. The Burritts were so amazed by their maid's achievements that they called the Miami Herald. The newspaper sent out the reporter james Lyons, who interviewed Mrs. Burritt and Zora, then wrote an article titled "Famous Negro Author Working as Maid Here Just 'to Live a Little.'" The article, which appeared in the March 27 Miami Herald, began:

  Employed as a maid in a Rivo Alto Island home is one of the nation's most accomplished Negro women. She is Zora Neale Hurston, 42, author of seven books published in six languages. You'll find her listed in Who's Who—one of the handful of her race so honored. As a domestic, she explained, she is getting a needed "change of pace." She isn't down on her luck.... Why, now, is she working as a maid?

  She was temporarily "written out," Zora responded. "You can only use your mind so long. Then you have to use your hands. A change of pace is good for everyone. I like to cook and keep house. Why shouldn't I do it for somebody else awhile?
A writer has to stop writing every now and then and just live a little."

  Zora was embarrassed for her friends in the Miami area to read that she was employed as a maid. It only got worse. A month after the Miami Herald article appeared, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a longer version of the James Lyons article.

  One of the nation's most accomplished Negro women is now working in a swank Gold Coast home. Press the doorbell at her fashionable Rivo Alto Island address and she will appear to greet you—in uniform. Miss Zora Neale Hurston, distinguished author of seven books published in six languages, is presently employed as a maid.

  Soon newspapers throughout the country picked up and expanded upon the articles. Just as she had shaved seventeen years off her true age when interviewed by James Lyons, Zora concocted a variety of stories to explain why she was working as a maid. Her main story was what she told Lyons—that she was "written out" and needed "a change of pace."

  To others who inquired, she said that her work as a maid was actually research. She needed to learn firsthand what working as a maid was like because she was planning to start a magazine "for and by" domestic workers. To Burroughs Mitchell, her editor at Charles Scribner's Sons publishing house, she wrote, "All I wanted was a little spending change when I took this job." She made up yet another explanation for her employers. She had large sums of money in banks in Europe, she told the Burritts, but since she didn't want to dip into her savings, she was working for them.

  Her explanations didn't fool the Amsterdam News, a black-owned newspaper in New York City, where Zora had lived for many years. Zora was working as a maid for the same reason anyone else did, this newspaper coneluded. "Although Miss Hurston is one of our best-known writers, she never did make a reasonable pile of money."

  It evidently made the Burritts uncomfortable to know that the woman who kept house for them was a person of distinction. "Servants are servants and must act accordingly unless the whole traditional relationship of employer and employee is to be endangered," Mrs. Burritt was quoted as saying by James Lyons. Zora soon left her job as the Burritts' maid—probably by mutual agreement. Characteristically making the best of the situation, Hurston told her editor that all the publicity had actually been good for her.

  "My working [as a maid] is causing a tremendous sensation in Miami," she wrote to Burroughs Mitchell. "I am being lectured about at poetry and other literary clubs. [A radio] announcer devoted half his time to me over the air last week. I have offers to do some 'ghosting.' It certainly has turned out to be one slam of a publicity do-dad."

  Despite her efforts to put on a cheerful face, the truth was that Zora Neale Hurston was nearly sixty years old, in failing health, without a permanent home, and badly in need of the thirty dollars a week she no longer received. The good news was, she was once again pursuing her number one passion in life: writing.

  2. "The Moon Ran After Me"

  FOR MOST OF HER LIFE, Zora Neale Hurston lied about her age. She told reporter James Lyons that she was forty-two when she was actually fifty-nine years old. At various times Zora claimed to have been born in 1895, 1898, 1899, 1900, 1901, 1902, 1903, 1904, or 1908. The most outrageous birth' date she made up for herself was 1910—shaving a whopping nineteen years off her true age. According to the Hurston family Bible, she was actually born on January 15, 1891, in Notasulga, a small Alabama town not far from the capital city of Montgomery. Zora was the fifth of eight surviving children—six boys and two girls—of John and Lucy Potts Hurston. The Hurstons were sharecroppers on a cotton plantation. Like many other poor southern people, they farmed a tract of land that belonged to another man and had to share their crop with him.

  John and Lucy gave their new baby the long name Zora Neal Lee Hurston. The name Zora means "dawn" or "sunrise" in Slavic, a branch of European languages that includes Russian and Polish. How did her parents think of this odd name? In her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, Hurston later speculated that her mother "had read it somewhere." The Neal in her name was in honor of a Mrs. Neal who was a friend of Zora's mother. Her second middle name, Lee, may have been for Lee County, along the border of which Notasulga is located. Zora later combined her two middle names to create Neale, and so she became known to history as Zora Neale Hurston.

  Zora's parents, John and Lucy Potts Hurston, were sharecroppers in Alabama when Zora was born.

  When Zora was about a year old, her parents made a move that was to shape her entire life. As she explained in her autobiography: "The ordeal of share-cropping on a southern Alabama cotton plantation was crushing to [her father's] ambition." John Hurston heard that near Orlando in central Florida there was a remarkable new town. Called Eatonville, it had been founded in 1887 as an all-black community. John visited Eatonville and fell in love with the place. He settled his family there in 1892, when Zora was still a toddler.

  At first the Hurston family lived in a small cabin in Eatonville, but they soon purchased a five-acre plot of land on which John, a skilled carpenter, built an eight-room house. Zora later remembered her Eatonville home as a paradise:

  There were plenty of orange, grapefruit, tangerine, guavas and other fruits in our yard. We had chicken on the table of ten; home-cured meat, and all the eggs we wanted. It was a common thing for us smaller children to fill the iron tea-kettle full of eggs and boil them, and lay around in the yard and eat them until we were full. Any leftover boiled eggs could always be used for missiles. There was plenty of fish in the lakes around the town, and so we had all that we wanted. We had oranges, tangerines and grapefruit to use as hand-grenades on the neighbors' children.

  By the time the Hurstons settled there, the town of Eatonville was five years old and thriving. It had two churches, central Florida's only school for African American children, a post office, and a general store. It also had a library and a newspaper called the Eatonville Speaker.

  John Hurston quickly made a success of himself in Eatonville. He established a carpentry business and on Sundays served as pastor of Macedonia Baptist Church. Zora's father wrote an early set of laws for Eatonville and also served as mayor of the town.

  Because they lived in an all-black community, the young people of Eatonville didn't suffer from discrimination and name-calling that other black boys and girls had to endure. Zora grew up a self-confident and creative child. One of her early memories was her discovery that, wherever she went, the moon followed her. She became convinced that she was special in this regard: "The moon was so happy when I came out to play, that it ran shining and shouting after me like a pretty puppy dog. The other children didn't count."

  Zora was shocked when her best friend, Carrie Roberts, claimed that the moon followed her wherever she went. No, Zora insisted, she was the moon's favorite child. To settle the dispute, one night Zora and her friend Carrie ran in opposite directions, keeping their eyes on the moon. That didn't solve a thing, for each girl still claimed that the moon had followed her as she ran.

  Zora had a vivid imagination. "I was making little stories to myself, and have no memory of how I began," she later explained. "But I do remember some of the earliest ones."

  One day Zora came in from playing outside and told her mother she had seen a bird sitting in the top of a pine tree with a tail so long that it stretched down to the ground. Zora claimed that she had climbed up the bird's tail into the tree, where she and the bird had a long talk. The strange creature told her that he had flown a long way just to speak to her. Another time, Zora confided to her mother that she had walked on top of a nearby lake without getting wet and that all the fish swimming beneath her feet had said hello to her.

  Grandma Sarah Potts, who often came to Eatonville to visit, thought that Zora ought to be whipped for telling what she called lies. But Lucy was amused by Zora's tall tales and told her mother, "Oh, she's just playing."

  Zora spent many hours with some miniature friends. She rescued the outer covering of an ear of corn from the garbage and turned it into a home-made doll she called Mis
s Corn-Shuck. Since her imaginary playmate seemed lonely, Zora swiped from her mother's dresser drawer a cake of scented soap, which became Mr. Sweet Smell. Some spools of thread from Lucy's sewing machine were transformed into the Spool People, and a loose doorknob that she yanked off became Reverend Door-Knob. Zora took all her play people into the open space beneath their house and had imaginary adventures with them over a period of years. Under Zora's direction the little folks held parties, carried on romances, had arguments, suffered illnesses, and went on trips together.

  Zora was curious about the world beyond Eatonville. She climbed one of the chinaberry trees near her family's front gate and gazed out at the horizon. "It grew upon me that I ought to walk out to the horizon and see what the end of the world was like," she later wrote. She showed her friend Carrie the view from up in the chinaberry tree and together they planned to walk to the horizon. But when the morning they had chosen for their expedition arrived, Carrie didn't show up at their meeting place. She had gotten scared that the walk to the horizon would take all day and they might get lost.

  Despite not being able to explore it just yet, Zora did manage to go a short way toward the horizon. In fact, because of her younger daughter's habit of wandering away from home, Lucy often said that on the day Zora was born someone must have sprinkled "travel dust" around their doorstep. A road leading to the city of Orlando ran past the Hurstons' house, and Zora liked to sit on the gatepost near the road and watch the white people drive by in their horse-drawn carriages and in a new invention called the automobile.

  "Don't you want me to go a piece of the way with you?" Zora would call out to the occupants of the slow-moving vehicles. Often they would stop and let the pretty young black girl ride with them for a halfmile or so. Then Zora would get out and walk back home.