Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
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Book Reviews of Their Eyes Were Watching God
Book Review: An American Masterpiece, well worth reading
Summary: 5 Stars
"Their Eyes were Watching God" has been variously described as feminist literature (though written in 1930), African-American literature (though the story is about people, first and foremost, and race is secondary to the novel) and as a lost masterpiece. It's a lost masterpiece. Thanks to Alice Walker and Oprah Winfrey, the book was brought back to the public's attention.
One of the issues with reading Hurston's novel is that it's written in dialect--in Hurston's rendition of how Southern Florida black dialect could be spelled out to her. So reading the book is a bit slow; you have to sound out the words in your mind. If this is a problem, then I'd suggest you listen to the book on tape (ably performed by Ruby Dee) and then read the book afterwards.
The story has barely a plot; Janey is a young woman who's grandmother was born in slavery. Her aspirations are no further than the front porch; to live in comfort means being simply able to sit, to sit on the porch and not be in constant motion, working every hour of every day for bare subsistence. She finds an older, established husband for Janey and insists she marry. Janey, then, has a life where, with reasonable work, she can fill her belly and sleep in shelter. Her life is not much better than that of a well-cared-for mule.
One day, Janey runs off with Jody Starks, a man of means who charms her with his worldy ways. This is a man going places. And they do go places; to Eatonville, a town that was chartered as an African-American community. Starks sees opportunity in every corner of dusty Eatonville, buys land, builds a store and a house and installs the beautiful Janey as a symbol of his mastery.
As Mayor, Starks has appearances to keep up. He has Janey stay in the house or work in the store, and when in the store, she is to keep her head covered. Janey has a wealth of long abundant hair, which Hurston uses as a symbol of life. Janey's hair is flowing and startling; men covet it. As the hair is covered, so is every enjoyment and thought Janey has. She chafes for 20 years under Stark's restrictive rules.
The scene where the "town mule"--a mule freed by Starks from an abusive owner and that became a sort of mascot, dies and is buried in the swamp is exceptional writing, worthy of Mark Twain. The mule is eulogized (by Stark, standing at one point on the mule as podium) and then abandoned to the waiting buzzards. The following scene where the buzzards arrive to do their undertaking is a flight of fancy that is hardly equalled in American literature. All along the book, Hurston takes smaller flights of language; her descriptions sometimes soar, or are humorous or completely imaginative.
Janey runs off after Stark's death with "Tea Cake"--a younger man. While her first two marriages were for the sustenance of the body (food, shelter, comfort, a home) this marriage is for the sustenance of the soul. Tea Cake plays guitar, plays games, dances, gambles, sings and flirts. Hurston is too clever to make him perfect; he hurts Janey, as only someone who loves another person can hurt them, and he is a bit of a cad, yet he brings out something in Janey that no life of pure material wealth could do--freedom and sensuality and joy. The culmination of the story is rather contrived, but still, the completion of the three marriages tells almost a fable-like story of a quest for personal growth. Janey comes home to Eatonville, and tells her story to Phoeby, her friend. The rest of the tale is up to us to fill in.
Sometimes the writing reminds me of Virginia Woolf--the interior dialog and mood of the character is the action as much or more than the action happening on the story's stage. Sometimes Hurston reminds me of Twain in her delving into the linguistic richness and uniqueness of Floridian life. Her education as a folklorist sharpened her ear, but her deep honesty into the interior life of women is what makes this story so great. It's definitely one of the top American novels and deserves to be read.
Book Review: Southern Florida in the early 20th century and one black woman's story
Summary: 5 Stars
This 1937 novel has become a classic of its time. It is a mere 184 pages long, but the edition of the book I read is packed by commentary. I skipped this commentary because I wasn't particularly interested in literary or social analysis. I just wanted to experience the book for itself and the story it told. Reading it this way, I actually "felt" the book in the way the author intended. And, "wow", I really understand why it has stood the test of time.
Set in her native Florida, we first meet Janie Crawford, a black woman in her 40s, when she returns to the town of Eatonville. She's been gone for a few years because she left town with a younger man named Tea Cake, who she married after she was widowed. As she tells her woman-friend her story, the reader is cast into her world.
Born the granddaughter of a slave, she was married young to a farmer who wanted more of a farm worker than a wife. She then ran away with a traveling salesman and moved to an all-black town where her new husband became the mayor. They had a general store and he expected her to run it, keeping her hair covered so that her beauty didn't show, and expecting her to be the perfect wife in the eyes of his world. She was unhappy but accepted this and nursed him through a long illness. When he died, she ran the store herself where she met Tea Cake, who appreciated her good qualities and completely adored her. Against the wishes of the people in the town, she ran away with him.
All of the characters in this book come across as real people. All have flaws and all have strengths. For example, even though Tea Cake stole her money and lost it all gambling, he begged her forgiveness, managed to pay back the money and was a devoted husband. He got a job in the Florida Everglades where both he and she worked hard and loved hard and were part of a community. And then, they were swept up in a devastating hurricane. It was awful. Lots of people died. They had to swim for their lives amidst the horror around them. While trying to save her, Tea Cake is bitten by a dog. Only later do we discover the dog was rabid and that Tea Cake himself has rabies. He turns on Janie then and there are dire results.
The book moved fast. I was glued to it but it took some getting used to because it was written in the Southern Black dialect of the time. This actually made the characters even more real to me. She did not necessarily preach about segregation. To her it was a "given". However, I was particularly moved by the part where she described the aftermath of the hurricane and how the black men were rounded up to bury the bodies of the dead. They had to carefully separate the white bodies from the black bodies. The whites got coffins and were buried in one section. The blacks did not get coffins and were thrown into a pit. Often it was impossible for them to know the race of the decomposing bodies. To me, this said more about segregation in the South than anything else I've ever read on the subject.
This is a very worthwhile book. I loved it.
Book Review: While other eyes were watching her
Summary: 5 Stars
What more can be said for any item that already has almost 400 reviews? If I can bring anything which others may not, it's a tie to the music. Having always loved Ring Games & Round Dances 2: Bahamas 1935 (a cd of field recordings by John Lomax and his local connections of the day) and noticed Ms. Hurston's small role in the liner notes mentioning seeing some of these dances and hearing some of this music herself, when Janie Mae Woods mentions being pushed away from the "rings plays" I felt I had an extra pass key into this world which is so vividly described by Ms. Hurston. I also felt I had another point of entry into the feelings of the ostracized Bahamian workers mentioned later in the book. I've heard the music Janie and Tea Cake were experiencing. I've moved to those same rhythms.
Their Eyes Were Watching God is more than I'd hoped, though I didn't know what I was expecting. Maybe 70% into the book I felt I'd begun to understand to what the title was referring, though it turns out I was wrong... maybe. I still think I was also right, though in a less literal sense. Partly self discovery, but mainly it's about freedom.
As much of a character-driven page-turner as it is, it's also invaluable as a snapshot of a USA that no one should have had to endure. There's no melodrama or sentimentality though. It struck me as being a purely honest look into a life as Zora knew it. I also think the book has taken on a new life now that we've all seen Hurricane Katrina.
Their Eyes is a remarkable achievement and deserves all the hype it has received in the years since Alice Walker and others have brought Zora Neale Hurston back into the public eye. I sense some of the same strength in her as I do in Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan.
Book Review: a must read!
Summary: 5 Stars
Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891-January 28, 1960) was one of the most important, insightful and forgotten authors who was especially prolific during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s through the 1940s. This was a very important period of time in the United States, because these decades truly were an especially prolific time for great African-American artists, writers, dancers, musicians, photographers and others to truly express their gifts to the world. Hurston was no exception. Born in Notasulga, Alabama, and eventually relocated to Eatonville, Florida, Hurston based much of her novels on the experiences of those around her, in the predominantly African-American Southern town. With a degree in Anthropology, she found the opportunity to do ethnographic research on those close to her, and truly wove some fascinating and unflinchingly realistic looks at the Southern Black experience.
THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD (written in 1937) follows the story of the main character Janey, and her experiences with three very different sorts of men, told in flashback style to her best friend, Phoebe. Janey's idealistic image of the relationships between men and women is not realized in reality. In fact, the common theme of woman "as mule," or beast of burden, for men, keeps resurfacing. This novel has been criticized by scholars and intellectuals alike, for what is described as a racist depiction of Southern Black life, during the early part of the 20th century. For me, this was not the case. I really believe that Zora Neale Hurston was channeling the experiences of many Black women she interviewed, over time, and wanted to present a realistic picture of the hardships they endured and [sometimes] overcame. Beautiful........Though, Zora died many years ago and wasn't well-recognized by a more mainstream audience, until Alice Walker brought her to the attention of many in the 1970s, I believe that her writing is alive and powerful today as the day she wrote it.
Book Review: Our horizions
Summary: 5 Stars
Zora Neale Hurston was a trained anthropologist, and her masterpiece Their Eyes Were Watching God is a study of mid twentieth century black culture. However it is also so much more than that. Hurston preserved for posterity the colloquialisms and cadences of black southern culture, one generation removed from slavery. But she does so in a universal and thought provoking novel that explores the very building blocks of the human condition: love, our personal dreams and growth, and every person's search to be true to themselves.
Although the protagonist of TEWWG is a black woman named Janie in 1930s Florida, she speaks to every mature reader who has ever invested in one minute of self reflection. Janie has persevered and grown through two failed marriages, the lust of youth and sexual self awareness, the stings of gossip and envy, the fulfillment of true love (and the devastating consequences of its loss) and the sense of peace that comes with self actualization and contentment with who one is as a person.
Hurston does all of this with her supreme use of figurative language, and her simple gifts of storytelling. This is one of the simplest (in terms of its style and construction) novels I have ever read, and yet its themes and complexities reveal new gifts to me on every rereading.
This novel deserves the attention it receives, and it deserves yours! Pick it up, but don't forget about it once you've read it. Its riches are revealed anew as our own life experiences evolve and change. Every time I pick it up I find more and more of myself in its pages. What a treasure!