Zora Neale Hurston faced the same challenge many of us do: everyone wanted her to be someone else.
The Harlem Renaissance carried its own quiet rules for Black excellence: urban, polished, distant from anything that sounded rural. Hurston came from Eatonville, Florida, a place alive with folklore, laughter, and language. She loved the sound of her people and refused to hide it.
That choice cost her. Not from white critics, but from Black thinkers who believed she made the race look backward. Their words cut deeper because they came from home. Yet she kept writing.
Hurston knew that authenticity is not weakness. The pressure to conform often comes from within. The hard question is how to stand firm when the disapproval comes from those who share your struggle.
She held her ground through disciplined knowledge. Trained as an anthropologist, she documented lives others dismissed. When challenged, she had facts, not feelings.
Marcus Garvey taught that development moves through three stages: the power of the mind, purpose, and perseverance. Or to put it simply, the power lies in our head, heart, and hands. Hurston lived this. Her studies gave her clarity of mind. Her love for her people kept her purpose steady. Her labor, writing Their Eyes Were Watching God in seven weeks while in Haiti, proved her devotion.
When the novel appeared in 1937, the backlash was swift. Too much dialect. Too small-town. Richard Wright called it a step backward. Hurston kept going.
She wasn’t writing to impress. She was preserving a people’s music and memory. Others saw shame where she saw genius.
Time sided with her. The critics faded. Hurston’s work endures because readers still want her voice.
There’s a lesson in that kind of knowing. When you’re grounded in who you are, opinions lose their sting. Hurston died in an unmarked grave, but the work outlived the judgment.
Her strength was evidence-based. She didn’t rely on slogans. She had field notes, songs, and faces that would have vanished without her. Her resistance had receipts.
She also refused to wait for permission. She didn’t ask whether dialect was respectable. She saw what was disappearing and chose to save it.
Garvey said, “The man who knows himself fears no one.” He wasn’t speaking of pride but of trust, trust in one’s own sense of truth even when it’s unpopular.
Most of us hesitate. We wait for validation and shrink when it doesn’t arrive. Hurston didn’t. Her endurance came from self-knowledge. Work rooted in that kind of truth doesn’t rot.
Not every honest voice gets fame. Many die unknown. But authentic work has a life of its own. Conformity dies on schedule.
Pressure will always return. Often from people who say they mean well. Your task is to build something strong enough to bear it. Know yourself so deeply that others’ opinions become data, not direction.
Hurston walked her own path and left a map. The invitation still stands.
