Zora
Neale Hurston in Memphis
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A Public Lecture by
Professor Ladrica
Menson-Furr
Department of English, The University of Memphis
McWherter Library, Room 226
March 17, 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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Professor Ladrica Menson-Furr will provide a public lecture on the noted African-American author and folklorist, Zora Neale Hurston
 | | Zora Neale Hurston (left) in her earliest known Photograph. Photo from Speak, So You Can Speak Again: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston, Doubleday, 2004. |
Before Zora Neale Hurston became a literary icon of the Harlem Renaissance, she was a young woman traversing between a once solid home life in Eatonville, Florida and a new beginning as the younger sister and caretaker for her brother H. Robert "Bob" Hurston and his family in first, Nashville and then Memphis, Tennessee. Although Hurston discusses her time in Memphis in her autobiography Dust Tracks on the Road, little attention has been noted of the significance of Hurston's time in Memphis as both a catalyst for her entrance into the forthcoming Harlem Renaissance movement and also as a place of closure for Hurston that she fictionalizes in her first published, Jonah's Gourd Vine and the well- known Their Eyes Were Watching God. In this lecture, Dr. Menson-Furr will discuss Hurston's tenure in Memphis and identify how this physical place becomes a balm for the psyche of Zora, the writer to come.
Dr. Ladrica Menson-Furr is assistant professor of English at the University of Memphis. She is the winner of the 2004 Distinguished Teaching Award and the 2004 Black Scholars Unlimited Igniting Excitement Award. Dr. Menson-Furr's most recent publications include biographical chapters on Black Arts Movement dramatist Ed Bullins and nineteenth century Creole dramatist Victor Sejour. Presently, Dr. Menson-Furr is composing a manuscript entitled "What He learned from Zora: August Wilson as Dramatic Ethnographer."
The public is encouraged to attend this free program.
For more information, contact Tom Mendina, University Libraries, The University of Memphis at 901-678-4310.
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