Zora Neale Hurston writes, "Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It is beyond me." This excerpt, taken from Hurston's essay "How It Feels to Be Colored Me," expresses Hurston's pride in herself as an African American woman. Her life reflects this pride for she was a flamboyant African American woman.
Hurston was born on January 7, 1891, in the all-black town of Eatonville, Florida. She describes her childhood as secure and free from all racial discrimination until the death of her mother in 1904. When she was older, Hurston attended Howard University , as an anthropology major. While at Howard, Hurston studied with the distinguished Alain Locke, who was a guiding spirit of the Harlem Renaissance.

After graduating from Barnard College in 1927, Hurston began to write and publish a number of short stories, plays, and some collections of American and Caribbean folklore before turning her attention to the novel. Her masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937, tells the story of a strong African American woman. Hurston also wrote her autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road, which was published in 1942.
Despite the relative success of her novels, Hurston died, impoverished on January 28, 1960. She was buried in an unmarked grave that was later discovered by Alice Walker, a revolutionary African American writer, in 1973. Walker considers Hurston to be her literary foremother, and she is largely responsible for the revival of Hurston's works.

Essay by Gail Upchurch of Howard University