Zora Neale Hurston’s classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God has made her a household name, but it wasn’t the only awesome thing she accomplished in her eventful life. Hurston had a degree in anthropology and conducted anthropological and folkloric research throughout the South, as well as the Caribbean, writing several books on her research as well as drawing from it for her fictional works.
In one instance, she studied a turpentine camp in Florida and documented the white male workers’ sexual exploitation of black women, a practice of forced relationships she referred to as “paramour rights.” For some time, Hurston lived in Honduras, where she had ambitions of locating the ruins of an undiscovered Mayan city, though unfortunately no such discoveries were made.
*http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/02/beach-reads-summer_n_7699708.html?ir=Women&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000046
