Zora Neale Hurston was best known for her novels and several collections of folklore. She was a writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance which celebrated Southern African-American culture. Her first novel, "Their Eyes Were Watching God," was a best-seller in 1937. Zora Neal Lee Hurston was born on January 7, 1891, in Eatonville, Florida. She was the fifth of eight children of Lucy Ann Potts and John Hurston ("Zora Hurston" 3). Her mother had died in 1904 when she was thirteen. He dropped out of school after his death. When young Zora saw her older sister, Sara was hurt and rejected her, having bad attitudes because of her new stepmother. A few years later, Zora got into a physical fight with her stepmother, forcing her father to take his daughter's side. When young Zora's schooling didn't pay well, she was put to work scrubbing floors and working in the kitchen. It was the only way for her to continue her education. While staying with her older brother, Bob, Zora had befriended a white woman. She liked Zora for her friendly and sisterly nature. When the white woman learned of a job as a maid for a singer, she wanted Zora to apply for the job (Lutz 7). At the age of sixteen, she had decided to join the work in a traveling stage show when they ended up in New York during the Great Depression (“Zora Neale” 1). By 1918, Hurston had spent two years at Morgan before graduating. . He did well in all his classes except math. She continued to finish Morgan so she could easily transfer from high school to college (Lutz 8). For the first time in his life in many years, Hurston had no financial problems. She had arrived in New York in 1925... middle of paper... which taught him to survive racial oppression (Kaplan 5). Hurston had a psychological motivation for presenting black culture. She had drawn materials for her novels for the rural areas and much of her Southern black life she had known as a child and had recorded folklore through collecting travels during the late 1920s and 1930s (Kaplan 5). Works Cited “Hurston, Zora Neale.” Online Information Search for World Books. World Book, 2014. Web. April 28, 2014“Hurston, Zora Neale.” Biographies of Britannica, Inc. 1994-2012 Web. 2 May 2014. Zora Neale Hurston, Cambridge: American Women Playwrights, 1900-1950. Kaplan, Deborah. fourth edition. New York: Salem Press, 2010. Lutz, Norma Jean eds. “Bloom's Biography of Zora Neale Hurston: InfoBase Publishing, 2003.