Wrapped in Rainbows - (Lisa Drew Books (Paperback)) by Valerie Boyd (Paperback)

About the Book

With the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Depression, and World War II as the historical backdrops, this riveting biography not only positions Zora Neale Hurston's work in her time, but offers implications for our own. of photos.

Book Synopsis

From critically acclaimed journalist Valerie Boyd comes an eloquent profile of one of the most intriguing cultural figures of the twentieth century--Zora Neale Hurston.

A woman of enormous talent and remarkable drive, Zora Neale Hurston published seven books, many short stories, and several articles and plays over a career that spanned more than thirty years. Today, nearly every black woman writer of significance--including Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker--acknowledges Hurston as a literary foremother, and her 1937 masterpiece Their Eyes Were Watching God has become a crucial part of the modern literary canon.

Wrapped in Rainbows, the first biography of Zora Neale Hurston in more than twenty-five years, illuminates the adventures, complexities, and sorrows of an extraordinary life. Acclaimed journalist Valerie Boyd delves into Hurston's history--her youth in the country's first incorporated all-black town, her friendships with luminaries such as Langston Hughes, her sexuality and short-lived marriages, and her mysterious relationship with vodou. With the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Depression, and World War II as historical backdrops, Wrapped in Rainbows not only positions Hurston's work in her time but also offers riveting implications for our own.

Review Quotes

O, The Oprah Magazine Hugely satisfying....With loving regard and agile scholarship, Boyd fills the gaps in Hurston's exhilarating life.

The Boston Globe An elegant and exhilarating biography.

The Philadelphia Inquirer Boyd paints a stunning portrait...in prose dazzlingly powerful, intellectually rigorous, and passionately poignant.

The Washington Post Scrupulously researched, gracefully written...the definitive Hurston biography.

Edwidge Danticat author of Breath, Eyes, Memory This biography is gorgeous, epic, larger than life, and like Ms. Hurston's own work is a momentous treasure, not to be missed.

About the Author

Valerie Boyd was the author of the critically acclaimed biography Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston, winner of the Southern Book Award and the American Library Association's Notable Book Award. She was the founder and director of the MFA Program in Narrative Nonfiction and the Charlayne Hunter-Gault professor of journalism at the University of Georgia. She was editor-at-large at the University of Georgia Press and senior consulting editor for The Bitter Southerner.