Zora Neale Hurston: A Biography of the Spirit [Paperback]

While most biographies of Hurston take a standard approach to revealing the facts and details of her life, this is the first to look at the role spirituality played in her life and letters. Throughout her fiction, nonfiction, political and social activity, Hurston's spirit shines through, animating all areas of her life. To ignore it is to paint an incomplete picture of a life that carries on through the works she left behind. Plant shows here that Hurston's spirituality helped her to endure the challenges in her life, including chronic ill health, personal and professional setbacks, financial difficulties, and other obstacles that might have crushed a less resilient soul. In revealing this often overlooked area of Hurston's life, Plant offers a more complete biography of this eminent woman of letters.Deborah G. Plantis associate professor and chair of the Department of Africana Studies at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida. She is author ofEvery Tub Must Sit on its Own Bottom: The Philosophy and Politics of Zora Neale Hurston.

Plant relies on previous biographies as well as interviews and correspondence with Hurston's friends and colleagues, to offer a portrait of a woman with an eclectic and searching sense of the spiritual in everyday life. Plant also explores the religious images in Hurston's work, the characters based on her own father, a preacher, and Hurston's understanding of the Baptist Church as well as other beliefs, including the voodoo practices of the West Indies. Hurston's appreciations of the transcendent in common people, her curiosity, and her own self awareness blended into an appreciation of the soul source that guided her life and her work. This is a compelling look at another side of one of the most significant literary figures of the Harlem Renaissance and American literature. Booklist

A biography of writer Zora Neale Hurston, this volume focuses on her spirituality as a driving force and how itlҬ