Valerie Boyd had been a fan of Harlem Renaissance author Zora Neale Hurston since reading her novels as a Northwestern undergraduate. But Boyd thinks fate guided her toward writing Hurston’s biography nearly two decades after graduating.
Boyd, Medill ’85, spoke about her recent biography, “Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston,” to 35 people Tuesday at the McCormick Tribune Center. The reading was sponsored by the African-American studies, gender studies and performance studies departments, as well as the Women’s Center, the Office of African-American Student Affairs and the Black History Month Committee.
Boyd recounted how she came to document the life of Hurston, the author of the popular novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”
While working as a copy editor for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Boyd made trips to Florida to attend festivals in Hurston’s honor. At one festival, Boyd’s life took a dramatic turn, she said.
The keynote speaker at the 1994 festival was Robert Hemingway, who Boyd greatly admired for his biography of Hurston. Hemingway said that it was time for a new biography to be written about the author, and it should be done by a black woman.
“I knew it was me,” Boyd said. “I knew it was my calling.”
More than a year later, Boyd left her job at the Journal-Constitution.
Starting then, Boyd devoted her time to researching the life and works of the woman she deems “the most prolific black American writer of the first half of the 20th century.”
“It was a great thrill to hold the original pages of ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ in my own hands,” Boyd said of the research she conducted over four and a half years.
Boyd said she learned that Hurston had plagiarized early works and had lied about her age to receive a free high school education.
She released “Wrapped in Rainbows” this year on Hurston’s birthday, Jan. 7.
Boyd now works as an arts editor and book critic at the Journal-Constitution.
Boyd ended her speech with an excerpt from her book describing how Hurston drew inspiration for one of the characters in “Their Eyes Were Watching God” from Hurston’s own love life.
“It sounded like she was telling a story,” said Malika Bilal, a Medill freshman. “She drew you into Zora’s life.”
