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50 free Zora Neale Hurston trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Zora Neale Hurston grew up in Eatonville, one of the first all-Black incorporated towns in America, shaved ten years off her age to get into high school, became the first African American at Barnard, trained under Franz Boas, and wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God in seven weeks in Haiti. She also filmed the last known survivor of the transatlantic slave trade, fell out with Langston Hughes over a play, and died in a county welfare home, buried in a grave nobody marked until Alice Walker went looking for it in 1973. These 50 questions cover the life, the books and the revival. Notasulga and Eatonville, the Morgan Academy birth-year trick, Howard and The Hilltop, Charlotte Osgood Mason's $200 a month, Fire!! and the Niggerati, Spunk and Sweat, Mules and Men, Jonah's Gourd Vine, Janie Crawford and Tea Cake, Richard Wright's review, Tell My Horse, Moses, Man of the Mountain, Seraph on the Suwanee, Ruby McCollum, the bonfire a policeman put out, Every Tongue Got to Confess, Barracoon in 2018 and the Halle Berry film. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss.
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Q 01In which year was Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston's most popular novel, published?
1937
Time later named it one of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923.
Q 02In which Alabama town was Hurston born in 1891?
Notasulga
Its name comes from Creek words meaning many teeth; her father's family came from there.
Q 03Eatonville, where Hurston grew up, was incorporated as an all-Black town in which year?
1887
It was one of the first such towns in the US; Hurston sometimes claimed it as her birthplace.
Q 04What office did Hurston's father John win in Eatonville in 1897?
Mayor
A Baptist preacher, he later led the town's largest church, Macedonia Missionary Baptist.
Q 05Hurston was the fifth of how many children?
Eight
All four of her grandparents had been born into slavery; her mother was a schoolteacher.
Q 06To qualify for free high school in 1917, Hurston began claiming which year as her birth year?
1901
She was 26 at the time; the false date even ended up on her gravestone.
Q 07Hurston finished high school at Morgan Academy in which city?
Baltimore
The school is now Morgan State University; she graduated in 1918 and went on to Howard.
Q 08Which school's student newspaper, The Hilltop, did Hurston co-found?
Howard
She earned an associate degree there in 1920 and paid her way working as a manicurist.
Q 09Which sorority, founded by and for Black women, did Hurston join in college?
Zeta Phi Beta
She was also the first in her family to attend college.
Q 10In 1925 Hurston became the first African American admitted to which women's college?
Barnard
Trustee Annie Nathan Meyer arranged the scholarship; Hurston took a B.A. in anthropology in 1928.
Q 11Under which Columbia anthropologist did Hurston study and conduct research?
Franz Boas
The 'Father of American Anthropology' was a cultural relativist; she also worked with Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead.
Q 12Which white patron paid Hurston $200 a month for Southern research from 1927 to 1932?
Charlotte Osgood Mason
In return she demanded all the folklore and hoodoo material Hurston collected; she also backed Langston Hughes.
Q 13Which 1926 magazine did Hurston produce with Wallace Thurman and other young Harlem writers?
Fire!!
The group called itself the Niggerati; the magazine lasted one issue.
Q 21Who is the protagonist of Their Eyes Were Watching God?
Janie Crawford
She returns to Eatonville in her forties and tells her story, starting with a pear tree and a kiss.
Q 22What is the nickname of Janie's third husband, Vergible Woods?
Tea Cake
A drifter and gambler who plays guitar, he was inspired by Hurston's lover Percy Punter.
Q 23Which real 1928 disaster strikes in Their Eyes Were Watching God?
The Okeechobee hurricane
Tea Cake is bitten by a dog while saving Janie from drowning and develops rabies.
Q 14Hurston's story 'Sweat', about the washerwoman Delia and her husband Sykes, features which animal?
A rattlesnake
Sykes uses her fear of snakes against her; the story ran in the single issue of Fire!!
Q 15Which Hurston story was selected for Alain Locke's landmark 1925 anthology The New Negro?
Spunk
It came just before she entered Barnard, when the Harlem Renaissance was at its height.
Q 16Hurston's 1928 essay about growing up in Eatonville is titled what?
How It Feels to Be Colored Me
It says she felt most colored when thrown against a sharp white background, as in Jacksonville.
Q 17Hurston's 1935 collection of African-American folklore from North Florida is titled what?
Mules and Men
She gathered 70 tales on the Florida trip and hoodoo material in New Orleans, adding 'Now you are going to hear lies above suspicion'.
Q 18Mules and Men draws on trips to Eatonville, Polk County and which city?
New Orleans
The Louisiana material covers her initiation into hoodoo practice.
Q 19What was the title of Hurston's 1934 debut novel?
Jonah's Gourd Vine
It follows the philandering preacher John Pearson and his wife Lucy, and was written in about three months.
Q 20Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God in which country, in seven weeks?
Haiti
She was there on a Guggenheim Fellowship researching Vodou for Tell My Horse.
Q 24Janie's second husband Joe Starks is elected to what position in Eatonville?
Mayor
He buys land, opens a general store and expects Janie to be defined by her marriage to him.
Q 25Which African-American novelist panned Hurston's 1937 novel as carrying 'no theme, no message'?
Richard Wright
Wright wrote in explicitly political terms; Hurston in turn attacked his communism in a 1938 review.
Q 26Who played the lead in the 2005 television film of Their Eyes Were Watching God?
Halle Berry
Oprah Winfrey's Harpo produced it for ABC, with Michael Ealy as Tea Cake.
Q 27Tell My Horse (1938) documents Hurston's research on rituals in Jamaica and which other country?
Haiti
Its fourth chapter describes the Nine Night ritual she joined in St Thomas, Jamaica.
Q 28Which foundation funded Hurston's 1936–37 Caribbean research?
Guggenheim
She had earlier been backed by the American Folklore Society with grants totalling $1,400.
Q 29Hurston's 1939 novel retells which biblical book from an African-American perspective?
Exodus
Moses, Man of the Mountain came out as she joined the drama department at North Carolina College for Negroes.
Q 30Hurston's last published novel, Seraph on the Suwanee (1948), is unusual for featuring mainly what?
White characters
She wrote much of it in Honduras and wanted to show the shared culture of Southern Blacks and whites.