Ocean State Libraries

"A groundbreaking study of the first Black female novelist and her life as an enslaved woman, from the biographer who solved the mystery of her identity, with a preface by Henry Louis Gates Jr."--

First published in 1942 at the crest of her popularity as a writer, this is Zora Neale Hurston's imaginative and exuberant account of her rise from childhood poverty in the rural South to a prominent place among the leading artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance. This is a book full of the wit and wisdom of a proud and spirited woman who started low and climbed high.

"Peter Bagge has defied the expectations of the comics industry by changing gears from his famous slacker hero Buddy Bradley to documenting the life and times of historical 20th century trailblazers. If Bagge had not already had a New York Times bestseller with his biography of Margaret Sanger, his newest biography, Fire!!: The Zora Neale Hurston Story, would seem to be an unfathomable pairing of author and subject. Yet through Bagge's skilled cartooning,...

This inspiring true story of the Pulitzer Prize- and Nobel Prize-winning author shows how she went from being the only Black child in her first-grade classroom — and the only student who could read — to becoming one of the greatest writers in modern history.