Posted by nameless on 7/16/2005, 1:34 pm, in reply to "Re: zora neale H. (death)" Zora Neale Hurston was deserted by the African-American intelligentsia because she did not believe in integration and was an accomodationist. She publicly denounced efforts by the NAACP to gain civil rights for her people ("Jim Crow works" she said) and associated with conservative politicians who themselves denounced integration. She was deserted by old friends because she had an explosive personality (she was likely bi-polar), was systematically cut off from what should have been rightfully hers (academia, grants, money, prestige, etc) because she did not care to play the political games one needs to play to be an insider. She was a feminist, and even today women are nobodies. She was left out because she was an opinionated woman and didn't give a rats ass if her opinions bothered others. She was forced to sell out tin order to make a living -- she named names during the Red Scare, denouncing her former friends Langston Hughes & WEB Dubois as communist sympathizers, publishing her opinions in the conservative American Legion magazine. She was deserted by her first publisher because she had opinions about World War II that were highly controversial (like saying after 9/11 that we were as bad as Sadam Hussein). She was deserted by her second publisher because modernism was on the rise and she had failed to keep up with trends and to change her work to reflect the growing black middle class. She had some bizarre ideas about race -- for instance, she wanted white actors to portray black characters in her 1940s book, "Seraph on the Suwanee". Zora Neale Hurston had some strange ideas and would be just as controversial if she were alive today. All in all, Zora was too contrary for the times because she thought that the physical mixing of the races would do nothing to change peoples' prejudices against those who were different from them. In many ways, she was right -- but what she didn't see was that defacto integration would turn out to be helpful in bringing jobs and opportunities to blacks who weren't getting them. If Zora Neale Hurston was alive today she would be on a par with Clarence Thomas in her beliefs. She thought blacks shouldn't be on welfare and should instead take menial jobs to get by, and should rely on education to advance them. I think it is easy to understand why she was deserted. There will be a terrific film on PBS in the next year or so about her.
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Zora Neale Hurston was not abandoned by her family. Surely you've had tiffs with your own family in some degree. Zora was in touch with many of her family members up until her death but was separated by thousands of miles from many family members at a time when it wasn't so easy for people to get together by flying or phoning. But she was in contact with those who lived nearby. So not the case at all that she was in the outs with her family.
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