蜜芽传媒

Zora Neale Hurston was an African American novelist and folklorist.

She was a queen of the Harlem Renaissance and a contemporary of Langston Hughes and Richard Wright.

But when she died in 1960, she was living on welfare and was buried in an unmarked grave. Her name was even misspelt on her death certificate.

Scotland's National poet Jackie Kay tells the story of how Zora became part of America鈥檚 literary canon.

Alice Walker wrote in her collection of essays 鈥業n Search of Our Mother鈥檚 Gardens鈥�: 鈥淲e are a people. A people do not throw their geniuses away. And if they are thrown away, it is our duty as artists and as witnesses for the future to collect them again for the sake of our children, and, if necessary, bone by bone.鈥�

And that's what Alice did: travelling to Florida in 1973, in search of Zora's grave where she laid down a gravestone declaring Zora "A Genius of the South".

Zora is now claimed by many of America's leading novelists including Maya Angelou, Zadie Smith and Toni Morrison, as their literary foremother.

80 years since the publication of her greatest work 'Their Eyes Were Watching God', Jackie Kay tells Zora's story.

Interviews include author Alice Walker, the poet Sonia Sanchez, The Guardian's Editor at Large Gary Younge and Zora's biographer Valerie Boyd.

Readings by Solange Knowles.

Photo: Carl Van Vechten

Producer: Caitlin Smith

First broadcast on 蜜芽传媒 Radio 4 in April 2017.

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