She was born and grew up in the all-black town of Eatonville, Florida, to a former schoolteacher and a Baptist preacher. She studied at Howard University. Encouraged by her teacher she wrote a short story “Spunk” and a play “Drenched in Light” to the literary competition in 1925. Both works won prizes. Zora moved to New York, worked as a secretary and then began graduate study at Barnard College where she studied anthropology. She made several trips to Florida and New Orleans where she gathered materials which were finally published in her books. She created several books : “The Great Day” (1932), “From Sun to Sun” (1933), “Singing Steel” (1934), “Mules and Men” (1935). They are important literary adaptations of the folk materials Hurston both remembered and collected. For example, “Mules and Men” presents about seventy different examples of African-American folklore, including spirituals, sermons, animal tales, jokes and it shows the role of women in the folk process.

In 1936 “Their Eyes Were Watching God” appeared. It is the most important contribution to African-American literature.

Following the publication of this book Hurston’s career entered a period of gradual decline complicated by poor health, increasing financial difficulties.

Hurston moved to Florida and there she supported herself through manual labor, public assistance and occasional journalistic writing assignments until her death on January 28,1960.

“Their Eyes Were Watching God” is a classic of black literature. In 1987 the 50th anniversary of the book was celebrated. It is still a bestseller. It is a voodoo novel.

The main characteristics of voodoo religion can be seen in the novel. It’s a multi-faceted religion. It doesn’t have a single book such as the Koran, Old Testament, New Testament, doesn’t have a creed. The distinct component of it is the harmony with others, oneself, nature and the spiritual world. Drums used for the ceremonies have come to symbolize voodoo itself. The main participants of the ceremonies are women (Marie Laveau of New Orleans was one of the most influential voodoo women in America). A system of numerology also expresses its influences. Nine is a perfect number. The other symbol of voodoo is the snake; snakes are associated with the divine, with the highest and most powerful god of this religion. They are the symbols of harmony as well; the religion rejects the snake as an image of Satan. The coiling, flowing motion of a snake or the completion of a snake biting its tail to form a perfect circle are images of harmony. Worship can involve offering food, wine, blood, sacrificing animals, dancing, singing, trance states. Worship also involves threats to the worshipper and fear; neglecting or insulting a spirit can result in harm to oneself.

In the 19th century it was simply taken for granted that the central character would also be a speaker of standard English. This is not the case in Hurston’s work; the main character Janie does not speak standard English.

After graduating from Lorain High School in 1949, she entered Howard University in Washington, D.C. The years at Howard were important years for her later development as a writer and her deeper understanding of the wider range of black life. She majored in English and minored in classics and was a member of the Howard Repertory Theatre. She graduated from Howard in 1953. There she changed her name to Toni because the students had problems pronouncing Chloe. While in Howard she met and married Harold Morrison – a Jamaican architect. The couple had two sons. In 1964 after the marriage ended in divorce Toni Morrison returned to Lorain.

Toni had written only for her own pleasure as a teenager and as a member of a writing group at Howard. Later in Lorain she began to approach her writing seriously as a way to connect with the way of life she had left behind, she wrote as a way of keeping in touch with her community when she says, she “had no one to talk to”.

Her next novel was “Song of Solomon”, it enjoyed much success. There were more than 570.000 copies of it sold by 1979. This book brought Morrison an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award.

After the success of “Song of Solomon” and then “Tar Baby”, Morrison says that she was officially able to declare her occupation as “full-time writer”.

Considered by 1984 to be a major American writer Morrison accepted an appointment at the State University of New York at Albany. Here she taught a class in creative writing and worked on her next novel. In 1987 she published her long-awaited novel “Beloved”. The story is based on the life of Margaret Garner, a Kentucky slave who with her four children escaped to Cincinnati, Ohio. When caught, she tried to kill all her children. The case received national attention in the 1850s as abolitionists tried to argue for Garner’s citizenship rights. When Morrison read this story while working on the “Black Book” she was deeply moved by the story. Here was a woman, Morrison says, who did a courageous thing: she took the lives of her children into her own hands.

In 1989 she accepted the Chair in the Himanities at Princeton, where she currently teaches creative writing and lectures in American Literature.

In 1993 she became the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for “Beloved” and she is the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for “Beloved”. She says that her writing was prompted by a “hunger” to read about the African American community.