February 25, 2020 - 6:00 pm -7:00 pm

Zora Neale Hurston is known most widely for her literary legacy, which includes the now famous novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Perhaps less known are her rebelliousness and her iconoclastic nature in the midst of the Harlem Renaissance and into the early Civil Rights Movement.  As a black woman artist, folklorist, and anthropologist in the early 20th century, Hurston blurred the lines between scientific objectivity and imaginative subjectivity. She was a boundary breaker and a person whose life challenged ideas about what women of her time could accomplish. Spend time in the “pleasure of [her] company” by joining us to learn more about the life and work of this creative genius of the South.

Tru Leverette, Ph.D. works as an Associate Professor of English at the University of North Florida, where she teaches African-American literature and serves as director of African-American/African Diaspora Studies. Her research interests broadly include race, gender, and identity in literature and culture. Her recent work has been published in MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora, and the edited collections Other Tongues: Mixed Race Women Speaking Out and The Search for Wholeness and Diaspora Literacy in Contemporary African-American Literature. Dr. Leverette’s edited collection With Fists Raised: Radical Art, Contemporary Activism, and the Iconoclasm of the Black Arts Movement is forthcoming from Liverpool University Press. She has recently finished writing a children’s book on Zora Neale Hurston.

This event will be held in the Chapel and is free to Beaches Museum members with a suggested $5 donation for non-members. Please visit the Beaches Museum website www.beachesmuseum.org or call 904-241-5657 for further information.

The 2020 Boardwalk Talk Lecture Series is generously supported by Fleet Landing Retirement Community.