"Things get so wrapped up into what someone is...I mean, in minority groups, whether they adhere to a genre. It's like the genre is making them, instead of them making literature. And Zora Neale Hurston is a good example of someone who's suffered because of that. That's why she got lost for so many years. She was uncompromising and did what she thought was right, and there were Black writers during the Harlem Renaissance who rejected her because they thought she was... well, you hear these strange things, like they said she was "too loud," which I don't understand. What does that mean? On the one hand, she was accused of playing up to whites; on the other hand, she did these wonderful anthropological studies of folk tales in her book Mules and Men. A lot of the misunderstanding about Zora Neale Hurston comes from the fact that people were trying to fit her into some existing pigeonhole. And she resisted that."
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Novelists from the United StatesShort story writers from the United StatesWomen authors from the United StatesWomen academics from the United StatesPlaywrights from the United States
Original Language: English
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1985 interview included in Conversations with Rita Dove Edited by Earl G. Ingersoll (2003)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zora_Neale_Hurston
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Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston (7 January 1891 – 28 January 1960) was an American folklorist and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance, best remembered for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937).
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