The Hurston Quagmire: Finding Our Place When We Don’t Seem to Fit
This week, as I delve deeper into the themes of my project, Labor Pains, I find myself reflecting on the complex journey of formally educated Black women. My project uses body maps to unearth hidden truths, and one of the most resonant of these truths is a pervasive feeling many of us carry: the sense of not quite fitting in anywhere, sometimes not even with each other. This brings to mind the incredible Zora Neale Hurston and how her life and work vividly represent this very quagmire.
Hurston often spoke and wrote about her dual existence: deeply rooted in the Black Southern community, yet also a college-educated woman whose work was supported by wealthy white patrons. This duality was particularly significant during the period of her most acclaimed research. As she was tasked with collecting folklore in the South, a debate was raging in academic circles about what folklore truly was, how it should be collected, and what constituted “legitimate” folklore.
There was a prevailing, problematic notion that the folklore of the Black South was “primitive.” This belief stemmed from the racist view that African Americans in the South, particularly descendants of enslaved people, were intellectually and racially inferior to their white counterparts. Consequently, their art forms and creative expressions were often dismissed as lesser than white artistic traditions.
What Zora Neale Hurston did was nothing short of revolutionary. She collected and contributed to Black folklore with an unparalleled passion and insight. She grappled immensely with the challenge of capturing the authentic sound, tone, expressions, settings, and contexts of the stories, tales, jokes, and songs she meticulously collected. Simultaneously, she utilized her “Northern college education” as a tool—a way to translate richly hidden tones for white audiences who might otherwise misunderstand or devalue them.
I don’t know if she would have predicted how disconnected and deeply embedded in our own lore the Black community would become by the first quarter of the 21st century.
This reminds me so much of the path trodden by sculptor Edmonia Lewis. Lewis, much earlier, had navigated a similar challenge. She employed themes from Greek mythology and familiar Western European iconography—elements recognizable and esteemed as “high art” by white Americans—and through these, she masterfully injected her own African American cultural and racial beauty, creativity, and artistic vision into her sculptures.
Both Hurston and Lewis seemed to understand a profound truth: while they had to navigate a world often “other” to them, there was absolutely no reason to abandon or discredit the inherent beauty of their own cultures. By strategically using lenses and forms recognizable to mainstream Western European and white American culture, they sought to illuminate the brilliance of African American creative expression. They didn’t dilute their heritage; they built bridges for others to witness its power.
This historical precedent resonates deeply with the “hidden truths” we explore in “Labor Pains”—the ongoing journey of validating our multifaceted identities and finding our footing in spaces that weren’t necessarily designed for us, all while celebrating the richness of where we come from.
The Economic Life of Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston, a towering figure of the Harlem Renaissance and one of the most significant American writers of the 20th century, lived a life marked by a stark contrast between her profound literary and anthropological contributions and her persistent, often dire, economic circumstances. Despite publishing more books than any other Black woman in America by the time of her death in 1960, including the now-classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, financial security remained perpetually out of her grasp. Her story is a poignant illustration of the systemic challenges faced by Black artists, particularly women, in the early to mid-20th century, where immense talent and cultural impact did not translate into commensurate financial reward. Hurston’s income was a patchwork derived from various sources, none of which provided stability.
Her literary earnings were shockingly meager; for instance, her bestselling work during her lifetime, the folklore collection Mules and Men (1935), earned her only $943.75 in royalties—the largest single royalty payment she ever received. Even her work as a story consultant for Paramount Pictures in 1941, which paid $100 per week, was her highest-ever salary but lasted only about three months. She supplemented these earnings with sales of short stories and essays, but these too were insufficient to lift her from precarity.
To survive and fund her groundbreaking research, Hurston relied on a combination of patronage, grants, and diverse employment. Her most significant patron, Charlotte Osgood Mason, provided a crucial stipend of $200 per month from 1927 to 1932 to support her folklore collection in the South. However, this support came with stringent controls over her work. She also received fellowships, such as the Guggenheim, and worked for the Federal Writers’ Project during the Depression, earning $67.20 per month as a “Junior Interviewer”. Throughout her life, and particularly in her later years, Hurston took on various other jobs, including teaching, journalism, and, strikingly, working as a maid even after achieving literary recognition, a testament to her ongoing financial desperation.
The Great Depression significantly impacted the financial viability of artists, and Black writers faced additional systemic barriers within the publishing industry, which often undervalued their work or sought stereotypical narratives. Hurston’s later works faced rejection, and her increasingly conservative political views sometimes alienated potential supporters. Consequently, she spent her final years in declining health and deepening poverty, eventually entering the St. Lucie County Welfare Home in Florida.
Zora Neale Hurston died penniless in 1960, her funeral expenses covered by friends and former publishers. She left behind no accumulated wealth, only unpaid debts, and her remaining papers were tragically ordered burned due to her indigence. Her economic journey underscores a painful reality: a “Genius of the South,” as Alice Walker later inscribed on her gravestone, could produce a monumental literary legacy yet live and die in profound material want, a stark reflection of the societal and economic inequities in our nation.
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