Class Notes 1/4/2013

Class Notes 1/4/2013

For homework - Work on revising your sonnet, read the historical packet, and keep reading Their Eyes Were Watching God

Bio about Zora Hurston Notes

Section 1

- Zora used to have a curiosity with horizons, and nature in general, and she ties that into her novel

- Zora grew up in Eatonville (all black town, self governed)

- Her father was biracial

Section 2

- Mom died, her father remarried, and she moved to Jacksonville

-Then she was sent to school

-She is now surrounded by more of a racist outlook in Jacksonville, unlike Eatonville

-Her father couldn't pay for school, so she was kicked out

-She started picking up jobs, but wasn't very good at any of them because she just wanted to read and write

-She went to  Morgan State and Howard University, and then met her husband 

-They got divorced, because they wanted to stick with their careers

Section 3

- She submitted articles to a literary magazine, and they were published and well liked by the editor

-Started getting more recognition

-Moves to NY, in the start of the Harlem Renaissance 

-She meets a guy named Boas, an anthropologist, who gives Zora an apprenticeship, and she eventually travels back to the south

Section 4

- 1927, she received a grant to travel back to the south and tried to research folk tales, but did not have much success

- She travels back to NY, and meets Mrs. Mason, and gets a one year contract to research in the south

- Zora found information for Mason, which is where she found some information for her book

Section 5

- In Louisiana and Florida, she would lie about her identity so that people would trust her and tell her their stories

-She learned about voodoo, and then became a firm believer in it

- She became a threat to women, because men were kind of attracted to her personality

- She became an apprentice to many voodoo doctors, and tried to heal a man she fell in love with voodoo, but he ended up dying

Section 6

- This section was about the letters she sent to Mason

-Zora has self-doubt, which was prominent in her letters

- Then Zora returns to Eatonville

Section 7

- Zora and Langston Hughes tried to write a play called Mule Bone

- She later tried to self-destruct the project, and it was never published (probably because she like Langston, but he was paying more attention to another woman, so Zora probably became jealous)

Notes -

dialect : writing the way we talk

vernacular : a particular region's dialect