44 pages • 1 hour read
T.R. Simon, Victoria BondZora and Me
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: Zora Neale Hurston
Content Warning: This section discusses slavery and anti-Black racism, including lynching, in the Jim Crow South, as well as racist slurs.
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was an American writer and anthropologist. She was born in Alabama, but moved to Eatonville, Florida, when she was a toddler. Hurston sometimes claimed to have been born in Eatonville; she also claimed various birth years ranging from 1901 to 1910. Her father was a preacher who also served as Eatonville’s mayor. In 1904, Hurston’s mother died, and her father and stepmother were not very supportive of her. Hurston was not able to complete her high school education until 1918, after spending several years working. Hurston then studied anthropology at Barnard College. She would go on to publish a number of anthropology papers, often in collaboration with noted anthropologist Franz Boas. Hurston married three times; her marriages lasted anywhere from a few months to a few years.
In the mid-1920s, Hurston became one of the most notable writers in the Harlem Renaissance, alongside Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, and others. She published several novels, the most famous of which is Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), about the life of a Black woman named Janie Crawford. Hurston also wrote many short stories, several of which were set in Eatonville. Hurston held some political views that were relatively controversial among Black writers and activists of the time. She opposed the desegregation of schools for instance, and her politics tended to be libertarian, while most other writers in her circles were politically left-wing. Hurston died in 1960, a few months after a stroke. She was buried in an unmarked grave. In 1973, novelist Alice Walker had a marker to Hurston erected on an unmarked grave in the area. The marker gives Hurston’s birth year as 1901.
Political Context: The Jim Crow South
After enslavement was abolished in the United States, a series of laws were put in place in many states, especially in the South, to enforce social and legal segregation between Black and white populations. These were collectively known as the Jim Crow laws. The laws required, among other things, that Black children attend separate schools from white children, that Black people use separate public facilities and entrances from white people, and that Black and white people not marry. In theory, these laws were predicated on the idea that these facilities were “separate but equal,” per the Supreme Court. In reality, facilities for Black people were often sub-par or nonexistent. In the 1950s and 1960s, activists involved in the Civil Rights Movement successfully pushed for reform, and the Jim Crow laws were eventually repealed.
Zora and Me is set around the turn of the 20th century when these laws were in full effect. Some Black people, like Gold, chose to pass as white to gain greater access to white facilities. Carrie and Zora are to some extent insulated from the full impact of racist laws because they live in the all-Black town of Eatonville. However, Ivory’s murder forces them to confront the fact that during this time, it was relatively common for white people to murder Black people without facing legal consequences. They also experience racism from Mr. Ambrose, who regularly uses the n-word to refer to Black people. The real Zora Neale Hurston was profoundly impacted by these laws and by her upbringing in Eatonville.
