In Chapter 9, Hurston describes her successful efforts to complete her formal education. After parting from Miss M., who wrote that she was struggling to support her family, Hurston found herself in Baltimore without many resources. Hurston took a string of jobs to save money, but she eventually concluded that she should simply go back to school since she never seemed to get ahead financially. Hurston enrolled in night school to finish her education, and later enrolled in a preparatory school at Morgan College with the encouragement of Dwight O. W. Holmes, an English teacher whose passionate readings of literature impressed Huston so much that she intended to become an English teacher as well.

The African-American dean of the school arranged a job as a live-in caretaker for Hurston, which allowed her to pay her tuition. Hurston was gratified to discover that her employers had an excellent library from which she read liberally. Because of her poverty and sense that she was not as attractive as her prep school classmates, Hurston was initially slow to make friends with the other students, many of whom were from the most prominent and affluent African-American families in Baltimore. Hurston’s obvious intelligence and humor soon made her a favorite of students and professors alike, and she eventually thrived there.