'At least get off the ground'

 

“Mama exhorted her children atevery opportunity to 'jump at the sun.' We might not land on the sun, but atleast we would get off the ground.” –Zora Neale Hurston

 

Born in Alabama on this date in1891, Hurston was a folklorist, anthropologist and one of the best-known Blackwriters and dramatists of the 20th century. 

 

A graduate of Howard University sheco-founded the school’s student newspaper, then moved on to Barnard College inNew York as the sole Black student.  In the mid-1920s she became oneof the key “writing members” of the famed Harlem Renaissance, an intellectualand cultural revival of African-American music, dance, art, fashion,literature, theater, politics and scholarship.

 

A master of the flashback style,Hurston wrote more than 50 short stories, plays and essays – most exploring orsharing the African-American experience from the last part of the 19th centurythrough the first decades of the 20th. 

 

She also authored 4 novels, led by the award-winning Their Eyes Were Watching God, a seminal work inboth African-American and women's literature.   Time magazine includedthe 1937 novel in its 100 best English-language novels of the 20thcentury.  Hurston died in 1960 and in 2015 she was one of the first12 writers inducted into the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame.

 

Noted for her meticulous research, she said,“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.”