THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD Sept. 5

ZORA NEALE HURSTON  Born in 1891 in Alabama  When she was 3, her family moved to Eatonville, FL, one of the first all- black towns to be incorporated in the US  When her mother died in 1904, her father remarried. They then sent her away to a Catholic boarding school in Jacksonville, FL.  After a while, her father stopped paying her tuition, and the school expelled her.

ZORA NEALE HURSTON  Hurston then began working as a personal maid to a lead singer in a theater company  She then began attending Morgan College (which was a high school), even though she was now 26 years old. She falsified her birth year, and began saying she was born in 1901  Because of her little-to no income, she was given free high school education  Hurston graduated high school in 1918, age the age of 27.  She then went on to attend Howard University where she earned an Associate’s Degree

ZORA NEALE HURSTON  in 1925 she was given a scholarship to Barnard College, which is a part of Columbia University in NYC. She was the only African-American to attend  Hurston graduated from Columbia in 1928, getting her Bachelor’s degree at the age of 37  She married twice, both ended in divorce  Hurston wrote multiple famous and well-known novels, papers, essays etc.  Even in her last years, Hurston worked as a freelance author and journalist

THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD  Written in 1937  During a time period of hostile economic, political and social climate  Discrimination laws, KKK, sharecropping, unemployment etc. were at large in this time

THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD  Harlem Renaissance:  During this period Harlem was a cultural center, drawing black writers, artists, musicians, photographers, poets, and scholars.  Writers during this time attempted to expose the racist oppression in American society  They wrote pieces of literature about African American culture and how badly blacks were being treated in the country

THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD  Harlem Renaissance:  African Americans were being described as the “New Negro” in an attempt to make them appear more socially acceptable, but Harlem Renaissance authors wrote avidly against that ideal  Hurston wrote differently than other Harlem Renaissance writers- instead of writing about how miserable African American lives constantly were, she celebrated the rural, southern-American communities as she found them.  Hurston refused to censor women’s sexuality, always including woman’s emotions and feelings in her romance novels

THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD  Life story of a woman who goes through multiple conflicts throughout her life  Includes issues such as poverty, romance and racism

CHAPTER 1 QUESTIONS – ANSWER IN YOUR JOURNAL 1.What is the name of the main characters we’ve seen so far? 2.What do we know about Janie? What does she look like, what do people think of her? What is Janie wearing that is different than the norm? 3.What does Pheoby bring to Janie? 4.What is the name of the man Janie is supposed to be with? What is the name of the Pheoby’s husband? 5.What does Janie mean when she says “unless you see de fur, a mink skin ain’t no different from a coon hide?”