Their Eyes Were Watching God
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Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston
Literature
James Mustich
Aug 1, 2018
Her refusal to write political novels about black people defined by the white world, together with her practice of rendering speech in black southern dialect—particularly in Their Eyes Were Watching God—inspired intense criticism from Richard Wright and other prominent contemporaries. Yet dialect is only one of the literary registers Hurston employs in Their Eyes Were Watching God. The novel tells the story of Janie Crawford, a woman born in unfavorable circumstances whose grandmother wants her to have the chance at happiness she never had and that Janie’s mother also missed. Searching for love and fulfillment, Janie runs away from the husband her grandmother finds her, marries another man and then a third, named Tea Cake, with whom she at last discovers a satisfying relationship—until tragic and violent events destroy their peace. Janie’s instinctual sense of the self she inhabits—an identity that extends beyond the descriptive categories that might otherwise define her as an African American, a woman, or a wife—is vividly conveyed, imbuing the book with a spirit of affirmation that its heroine embodies throughout her tribulations.
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Ramon Mayo
Apr 8, 2019
This book gives you the raw and unadulterated african american experience of the time
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Jane Huttner
Jan 9, 2020
a great book of Janie coming to the self actualization of herself despite her grandmother Nanny and her first 2 husbands. Even though she had a short 2 years with Tea Cake, she comes home satisfied at finally having a loving relationship that was reciprocated.
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Susan Berry
Jun 25, 2020
The characters are real, not the perfectly sized statutes of many novels with dialect that makes the dialogue pop. Janie, Phoeby and others exist then ... and now.
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Rachel
Aug 25, 2023
Forever my favorite book of all time
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