To what degree did Zora Neale Hurston draw on her experiences as a Southerner in her writing?

Answer 1

Whether you want to call it her experiences as a Southerner or her experiences as an African-American woman...it essentially comes down to the fact that much of what she wrote she drew from her experiences growing up in a mostly black--if not all black--Florida town/community. Most of her fiction has folkloric elements. The themes. The symbols. The dialect. Everything. If she had grown up anywhere else (besides the South, besides that town) her writing would have been different. She would have been shaped differently. Her writing was very authentic to who she was and where she was. She embraced her culture, and loved writing about the people and places she loved and remembered.