My article, “Making A Way Out of No Way: Hurston’s Indigenous Inspirations,” was recently published in The Comparatist . It discusses several examples of engagement with Indigeneity in the works of novelist, anthropologist, and author Zora Neale Hurston. There’s also mention of a pretty significant hurricane that hit Florida.
As a follow-up to the article, I presented last week on just the weather-related piece for the annual Zora Neale Hurston conference hosted by Bethune Cookman University. This was quite the exciting research find for me, focused on the hurricane in Hurston’s 1937 classic, Their Eyes were Watching God. Also known as the Okeechobee Hurricane, the Forgotten Hurricane, and the San Felipe Segundo, the storm hit Puerto Rico and then Florida – landing in West Palm Beach.
My research presentation included images like this one, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Amazingly, Hurston was not in Florida for the 1928 hurricane, but the NEA notes that she was in the Bahamas for a particularly devastating hurricane in 1929. She managed to rescue a family from a house just before it collapsed.
I also shared newspaper articles Hurston might have consulted, images from the Library of Congress and more. It was especially fun sharing the ways in which Hurston likely engaged with a Birmingham Reporter article by Mary McLeod Bethune, given that Bethune is the original namesake of the university hosting the conference. It was also fun seeing my fellow NEH Hurston Institute colleagues present, as well as one of our instructors, Dr. Deborah Plant.
