Zora Neale Hurston Biography

In 1973, while conducting research on West Indian voodoo, a young writer named Alice Walker came across Mules and Men, a book on the subject written by one Zora Neale Hurston. By the book's end, Walker found herself more interested in the author of the book than its subject. She did a little digging and found another book by Hurston, an obscure novel called Their Eyes Were Watching God. Walker, who would later go on to earn her own fame as the author of The Color Purple, realized after reading Eyes that "There is no book more important to me than this one." she wrote in a letter to her friend, the poet Countee Cullen. And what nerve it was. Zora Neale Hurston may have died in obscurity, but her works live on.