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The American novelist Zora Neale Hurston died in 1960 with most of her books out of print, and was buried in an unmarked grave. In 1973 the writer Alice Walker found its likely spot in Florida, set a headstone there and helped bring her work back to readers.

Fort Pierce, Florida, 1973

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The story behind the card

Hurston was a leading writer of the Harlem Renaissance, the flowering of Black literature, music and art in 1920s New York, and a trained anthropologist who collected folklore in the American South and the Caribbean. Her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is now a classic. By the 1950s she was poor, working at times as a maid and a substitute teacher, and she died in a county welfare home in Fort Pierce, Florida. Walker searched the cemetery with the scholar Charlotte D. Hunt. The stone she paid for calls Hurston 'A Genius of the South' but gives her birth year as 1901, the date Hurston herself had used for decades instead of the true 1891. Walker's 1975 essay in Ms. magazine revived interest in her work.

Türkçe oku
Amerikalı romancı Zora Neale Hurston 1960'ta öldüğünde kitaplarının çoğu artık basılmıyordu; mezarına bir taş bile dikilmemişti. Yazar Alice Walker 1973'te Florida'da mezarın olabileceği yeri buldu, oraya bir taş diktirdi ve Hurston'ın eserlerinin yeniden okunmasına öncülük etti.
Fort Pierce, Florida, 1973

Hurston, 1920'lerde New York'ta siyahi edebiyatın, müziğin ve sanatın parladığı Harlem Rönesansı'nın önde gelen yazarlarındandı. Antropoloji eğitimi de almıştı; Amerika'nın güneyinde ve Karayipler'de halk anlatıları derledi. 1937'de yayımlanan Their Eyes Were Watching God bugün bir klasik sayılıyor. 1950'lerde yoksulluk içindeydi; zaman zaman hizmetçilik ve vekil öğretmenlik yaptı, Florida'nın Fort Pierce kasabasında bir düşkünler evinde öldü. Walker mezarı araştırmacı Charlotte D. Hunt'la birlikte aradı. Parasını kendisinin ödediği taşta Hurston “Güney'in Dehası” diye anılıyor, ama doğum yılı 1901 yazıyor. Gerçek doğum yılı 1891'dir; 1901'i ise Hurston onlarca yıl boyunca kendisi kullanmıştı. Walker'ın 1975'te Ms. dergisinde çıkan yazısı, eserlerine yeniden ilgi uyandırdı.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Zora Neale Hurston
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