Zora's Roots

Originally broadcast on PBS, Tom Lowe's documentary profile Zora's Roots traces the extraordinary life of Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), the complex yet often elusive writer who reigned as a literary doyenne during the 1930s, but ultimately died in poverty, and was buried in an unmarked rural Florida grave. Hurston's life was rich in triumphs: she was the first African-American graduate of New York's Barnard College, a celebrated novelist and playwright, and a pioneering anthropologist who documented (both in print and 16mm film) the cultural heritage of the African-American communities in the Deep South. Combining interviews, archival footage, and dramatic reenactments, the film explores how Hurston's childhood in the all-black community of Eatonville, FL, shaped her literary work and her personality (although she was one of the most prominent figures in the Harlem Renaissance, Hurston nonetheless chose to focus on a southern rural environment in most of her work). If the film doesn't quite explain some of the self-destructive emotional contradictions that ultimately sped Hurston's decline in popularity (especially her vocal and often strident denunciation of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision), it nonetheless serves as a compelling celebration of a distinctive talent, while also offering an always-welcome reminder of the greatness of Hurston's crowning achievement, the 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (P. Hall)