Question

Where did Zora Neale Hurston grow up? What kind of town was it?

a) She grew up in New York City, a bustling metropolis.
b) She grew up in a small town in Florida with a close-knit African American community.
c) She grew up in a rural village in the Appalachian mountains.
d) She grew up in a wealthy suburb in California.

Answer 1

Zora Neale Hurston grew up in Eatonville, Florida, an all-Black town where her father was the mayor, and which significantly influenced her later work.

Step-by-step explanation:

Zora Neale Hurston grew up in Eatonville, Florida. Eatonville was one of the nation's first all-Black towns and Hurston spent her childhood there from the age of two until her mother's death in 1904. It was a close-knit African American community where her father became the mayor and the residents, including business owners and government officials, were Black American elites.

Eatonville provided a supportive and nurturing environment that celebrated racial pride and the African-American culture, free from the sense of racial inferiority that was pervasive in other parts of America during that era. Zora Neale Hurston's upbringing in this town significantly influenced her later work as an anthropologist and a key figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Her most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is part autobiographical and portrays life in an all-black town akin to Eatonville