Novelist, folklorist, journalist and critic, Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was for 30 years the most prolific black woman writer in America. This is her account of her life, her attitudes to racial politics and her quest for artistic and cultural expression. With its rich interweaving of history and folklore, politics, dream and recollection, the road she follows is often circuitous, full of obstacles and false leads. But what emerges is an intriguing self-portrait of the woman whom Alice Walker has described as a native American genius, as unbound by convention in her life as in her art, and long overdue for the recognition she deserves.