ALL ABOUT ZORA

Author Lucy Anne Hurston spoke about the influence her aunt Zora Neale Hurston and Zora’s work had on her, and several people in the audience spoke to how the book had come into and influenced their lives.

In her talk Wednesday night, Lucy Anne Hurston mentioned culture, race, education and travel — “a literate population is a powerful population,” she said — women’s rights, the pressures of societal and cultural expectations and how all those things were reflected in Zora’s life and work. She also spoke about how she came to write, and how she researched “Speak, So You Can Speak Again.”

“To hold up somebody like Zora that defied all the odds, based on her socioeconomic class, her race, her gender, being rural, being Southern, being poor, being black, being female ... That is why she’s an important contributor,” Lucy Anne said.

A cultural anthropologist and author during the Harlem Renaissance and after, Zora wrote short stories and scripts, catalogued and preserved unique aspects of black culture and wrote the canonical “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”

Lucy Anne also talked about the confluence of her and Zora’s lives — both cultural anthropologists, for example — and the influence her aunt and her aunt’s books had on her, mentioning the fact that she went to college at 31 after working as a data processor for 15 years.

“It’s never too late,” she said. “It’s too late when you’re dead. And that’s only maybe, because we don’t know what’s going on up there.”

Zora’s work had influences on several people in the small audience at the Iberia Parish main library, as well.

Elaine P. Campbell, who is now on her 52nd year as a teacher for area schools, said she taught the book for 34 years in area schools — Henderson and New Iberia Senior High.

“She (Zora) made my job easier. They loved it,” she said.

Judy Webb, a New Iberia resident, said she was inspired to come to the event as a member of Zeta Phi Beta sorority, to which Zora belonged and Lucy Anne belongs.

“I was so excited a family member was coming right here to New Iberia,” she said. “Thank you for your inspiration.”

Jean-Pierre, Bertha and Peter Reaux came to the event from Abbeville.

They first received a compilation of some of Zora’s books and stories in the mail as members of a book club about 12 years ago  and now all of them have read it.

“We feel close to her because ... the way she speaks is the way that we grew up. Our people spoke the way she spoke, she has written,” said Peter.