'Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at the Sun'

I have a kind of collect-them-all affection for the PBS biographical series "American Masters," now in its 22nd year and happily catholic in its definition of who qualifies as an American Master. Jasper Johns, Julia Child and James Brown, to name just three whose names start with J.

Some editions are better than others, of course, and few are really critical of their subjects, even when allowing a peek at the warts -- their American mastery is expressed and explicated, yet always taken as read. But most all are better than what passes for "biography" on most other networks, where a couple of hit records or a popular sitcom is considered reason enough to haul a star's old elementary school teacher in front of a video camera. (There are a lot of hours of TV to fill.)

It takes a little more than that to become an American Master. The latest episode, airing tonight, "Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at the Sun," concerns the author of "Their Eyes Were Watching God," which, most famously, Oprah Winfrey and Halle Berry converted into a TV movie a few seasons back.

But Hurston wrote other novels, nonfiction books, plays, and newspaper and magazine articles. The first African American to graduate from Barnard College, she was a charter member of the Harlem Renaissance and an ethnographer who documented Southern black folkways on the page and on film -- some of that footage is seen here. She put that culture on stage as well, calling it "the greatest wealth of the continent" and warning, "This stuff won't last long."

She is described here, not necessarily by people who knew her, but people who have spent their lives coming to feel as if they did, as "bodacious," "outrageous," "feisty," "raunchy" and "a rebel." (Photographs show a lively, confident woman of whom this certainly could be true.) "She seems to have been herself all the time," says one commentator. A woman whose early hero was Hercules, Hurston was independent even to a fault, and though she was passionate about her roots, she was not political about her race. "I am not tragically colored," she wrote. "I do not weep at the world. I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife."