Documentary Film: “Zora Neale Hurston: Heart with Room for Every Joy”
Zora Neale Hurston, born 1891, was an author, folklorist, journalist, dramatist, and influential member of the Harlem Renaissance who celebrated African American culture of the rural South. She is considered one of the finest American novelists of the first half of the 20th century best known for her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). A complex and controversial figure, Hurston was an ardent promoter of African American culture.
When she was an infant, her family moved to Eatonville, Florida, which shaped her life and her writing. Of the more than one hundred black towns founded between 1865 and 1900, fewer than twelve remain today. Eatonville is the oldest.
This illuminating biography of Hurston—a compelling story of a free spirit who achieved national prominence yet died in obscurity—examines the rich legacy of her writings, which include Mules and Men, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Tell My Horse, and Dust Tracks on a Road. Interviews with Lucy Anne Hurston, Zora’s niece and author of the biography Speak, So You Can Speak Again, and with Henry Louis Gates Jr., W. E. B. DuBois Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, are featured. The program amply demonstrates that Hurston truly had, as it said in her high school yearbook, “A heart with room for every joy.” A Films for the Humanities & Sciences Production. (42 minutes)
Special VIP host will open the evening and facilitate a Q&A.
St. Paul’s Parish Hall, 188 South Swinton Avenue, Delray Beach. 6:oo pm
Free parking.
Refreshments will be served.
