Emerging onto the American Literary Scene in 1922 with the publishing of her first poem "Journey's End" circulated in Negro World, a weekly African-American Newspaper based in New York City, Hurston is forever immortalized in the Canon of American Literature for her novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God", which populated the shelves of bookstores in 1937. Regarded for its exploration of gender roles and female identity, the book proved to be a foundational narrative for the Black Feminism movement led by Mary Helen Robinson, Audre Lorde, and Alice Walker and is praised by TIME as one of 100 best English-language novels published since 1923.
A controversial figure for her time due to her sympathy for Old Right faction of American Conservatism, and her opposition to Brown v. Board of Education, Hurston is nonetheless revered for being a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance which brought about the re-emergence, and empowerment of African-American Art within the fabric of American Culture along with her peers Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison. Here are 5 pieces of wisdom imparted by arguably the most influential female African American writer of her era:
1. "If you are silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it."
If you have something to say, express, or show, make sure you show, express and say it before somebody says, expresses, and shows for you. When they do, it might not be what you meant to show, express, or say.
2. "She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her."
Nothing simply comes to us by waiting for it, we have to work for it, fight for it, and take it for ourselves. All we get for waiting, for standing still, is death. Something that leaves us still. Even if we may not be standing.
3. "Bitterness is the coward's revenge on the world for having been hurt."
When we allow something to get the best of us because we did nothing stop it, all that remains is the pain of knowing we can no longer stop it.
4. "Love is like the sea. It's a moving thing, but still and all, it takes shape from the shore it meets, and it's different with every shore."
Love is universal, but the way it is expressed, received and enacted is different because each person enacts, receives, and expresses love differently.
5. "There are years that ask questions and years that answer."
Answers lead to questions, just as questions are met with answers. To get them, however, not only takes perception but time.
In spite of her polarizing positions in the realm of politics, Zora Neale Hurston forever remains an inspiration for African-American Writers seeking to find their voice in a country where the norms and institutions are very much designed to hinder the progress of such artists. Specifically tapping into the struggles of African-American women, and their travail to establish a sense of legitimacy and identity in the male-dominated United States of the 1920s, Hurston's voice, joined by the voices she has empowered, echoes throughout history from the microphone of her books, her essays, her poems -- her words.
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