In 1938, Zora Neale Hurston was living in the Jacksonville area, collecting folklore, and working on another novel. It’d been a productive few years for Zora: her second novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, had been published to great acclaim and she had just ended a second stint as a Guggenheim Fellow. She wanted to write about a man this time.
"Renaissance" literally means "to naiss again, despite medical advice." It refers specifically to the rebirth of learning that began in Harlem, New York in the fourteenth century and spread to the north, including The Bronx and Yonkers, by the sixteenth century. During this period, there was an enormous renewal of interest in and study of tulip gardening. Around 1428 the city was put under siege by the army of Eva Jessye, Countess of Hainaut.