A noted collector of tall tales, Zora Neale Hurston also knew how to tell one about her own life, whether it was to skim years off her age or offer an explanation for why she, a highly regarded author, was working as a maid in Miami in 1950. In this intriguing account, Zora’s own tall tales about her life become part of the telling, and part of the way readers gain an understanding of this intelligent, ambitious, creative woman who lived in a world that threw one challenge after another her way, because she was a woman, and because she was Black. (Having a larger-than-life personality could be a challenge, too, though it powered her through difficult times.) Zora’s determination and talent helped her face everything from a turbulent childhood after the death of her mother to repeated delays in pursuing her dreams, and they continued to drive her even as she fell into obscurity in the 1940s and 1950s. A final chapter chronicles the rise of Zora’s legacy. Two of the folktales Zora collected (work that came naturally to her once she dropped her academic persona and was welcomed among southern Blacks as one of them), along with lists of sources, round out this insightful, engaging volume. (Age 11 and older)

Zora Neale Hurston was confident, charismatic, and determined to be extraordinary.
As a young woman, Hurston lived and wrote alongside such prominent authors as
Langston Hughes and Alain Locke during the Harlem Renaissance. But unfortunately,
despite writing the luminary work Their Eyes Were Watching God, she was always short
of money. Though she took odd jobs as a housemaid and as the personal assistant to
an actress, Zora often found herself in abject poverty. Through it all, Zora kept writing.
And though none of her books sold more than a thousand copies while she was alive,
she was rediscovered a decade later by a new generation of readers, who knew they
had found an important voice of American Literature.