American · 1891–1960
Zora Neale Hurston was a Harlem Renaissance novelist and anthropologist who captured Black Southern vernacular like no one before. "Their Eyes Were Watching God" (1937) follows Janie Crawford through three marriages and a hurricane; the novel was dismissed by male critics of her era and rediscovered by Alice Walker in the 1970s. Hurston studied anthropology under Franz Boas and collected folklore in Florida and the Caribbean. She died in poverty in 1960 and was buried in an unmarked grave. Walker found and marked it. Now Hurston is read everywhere.