If Langston Hughes was the prom king of the Harlem Renaissance, you can view Zora Neale Hurston as the prom queen. For a time, the two were close friends and collaborators. They even tried to develop a play together, called Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life. It didn't work out that well in the end, though.

So why was Hurston so important to the Harlem Renaissance? Well, her writing provided a desperately needed feminine (and feminist) voice in a movement that was dominated by men. See, Hughes and W.E.B. Du Bois may have defined many of the major concepts of the movement, but when they talked and wrote about the "New Negro," what they really meant was the "New Negro Man."

Who was the New Negro Woman? Hurston provided some answers to that question.

Not that she thought she could represent black women all over Harlem, let alone the world. Actually, she was more interested in showing off her individual aesthetic, which had nothing to do with being a typical "tragic" black American—man or woman.

This individualistic bent made Hurston quite controversial. She wasn't into rehashing the drama of being an ex-slave, and she didn't buy into the whole idea of the black American as a simple victim of white society.

So you can imagine how she rubbed parts of Harlem (and black America as a whole) the wrong way. What with the whole New Negro and Pan-Africanism movements gaining momentum and all.

But she was an eclectic, bold voice. And love her or hate her, she showed the rest of us how the freedom of a black-dominant place like Harlem could produce someone as unique and brilliant as she was.

Mules and Men

Hurston was seriously multi-talented. This book combines anthropological field research with the folklore and voodoo (or "hoodoo") traditions of the American South. So, believe us when we say: no other book is like this one. Period.

It contains incredibly valuable documentation of Black Southern culture, but it's not totally dry and boring. No, this work adopts the actual voices of the people she interviewed. So reading it is almost like sitting around listening to a recording of black Southerners in the 1920s and 1930s. Pretty amazing stuff.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

This is the novel to read if you want to know what Hurston's writing is like. It's also one of the most famous novels of 20th Century American lit. And really, it's not hard to read, either. It's a simple story about a girl coming of age through her relationships with different men.

But it's profound, too. Trust us: while this book may sound a bit like an old-timey Sex and the City, it cuts way deeper than Carrie and her Mr. Big troubles. For one, it's set in the South (Florida, if you want to know) during the early 20th century, and it's written in the way black Southerners spoke back then.

In other words, it gives you a good sense of what life might have been like back then for a young black girl. And besides that, it packs a whopping good story.

All in all, this book's a real winner if you ask us… or your English teacher.

Chew on This:

We'd like to call Hurston an early feminist. She might not have used that word herself, but in her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, she did something almost unimaginable at the time: portray the plight of an African-American woman who was bound to the men in her life.

What do you get when you mix the voice of a young Southern girl with that of a narrator who sounds like she came straight from Harvard (or maybe Barnard College)? Hurston's writing style. It's an homage to the complexity of the African-American "voice":