Title: Zora Neale Hurston | Encyclopedia of Alabama
Headings: Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston
Content: She championed diversity. Hers were ordinary people too busy living to spend much time feeling oppressed or demanding pity or sympathy from a dominant culture whose values were questionable. Their Eyes Were Watching God
Some Harlem Renaissance artists believed that it was their duty to create literature, art, and music that promoted assimilation into white mainstream American culture. Hurston drew criticism from some African American intellectuals, including novelist Richard Wright, for writing dialogue in rural African American dialect and for presenting her characters in ways that other writers and critics considered backward or inappropriate. Her writing also met with criticism from some white literary reviewers, who felt that her characters were stereotypes. Her friendship with Langston Hughes ended over a disagreement about writing credits for Mule Bone, a play on which they had collaborated. Hurston graduated from Barnard in 1928 and embarked on a successful career as a playwright. She wrote and directed musical, dance, and dramatic productions that employed black talent and emphasized African American culture and contributions to U.S. history and society and were performed in New York, Florida, and Chicago. In 1934, she published her first novel, Jonah's Gourd Vine. That same year, the Rosenwald Foundation offered her a fellowship to enter the doctoral program in anthropology at Columbia University;