“The monstropolous beast had left his bed. The two hundred miles a hour wind had loosed his chains. He seized hold of his dikes and ran forward until he met the quarters; uprooted them like grass and rushed on after his supposed-to-be conquerors, rolling the dikes, rolling the houses, rolling the people in the houses along with other timbers. The sea was walking the earth with a heavy heel.”

American writer, anthropologist, folklorist, and documentary filmmaker

Zora Neale Hurston was an American writer, anthropologist, folklorist, and documentary filmmaker. She is best known for work that portrayed racial struggle in the early 20th-century American South, and for her landmark novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937. Hurston also wrote more than 50 short stories, plays, an autobiography, ethnographies, and many essays. Her research on Hoodoo and Caribbean Vodou, including Tell My Horse, helped shape later thinking in anthropology and ethnography, while her work also bridged literature and Africana Studies.