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Book Reviewed by:Originally published in 1937, Their Eyes Were Watching God has become one of the most important and enduring works of modern American literature.
Written with Zora Neale Hurston's singular wit and pathos, this Southern love story recounts Janie Crawford's "ripening from a vibrant, but voiceless, teenage girl into a woman with her finger on the trigger of her own destiny."
A tale of awakening and independence featuring a strong female protagonist driven to fulfill her passions and ambitions, Their Eyes Were Watching God is a classic of the Harlem Renaissance and perhaps the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of literature.
Excerpt
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.
Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.
So the beginning of this was a woman and she had come back from burying the dead. Not the dead of sick and ailing with friends at the pillow and the feet. She had come back from the sodden and the bloated; the sudden dead, their eyes flung wide open in judgment.
The people all saw her come because it was sundown. The sun was gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky. It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road. It was the time to hear things and talk. These sitters had been ...
Janie's choices reflect a level of self-interest and autonomy rarely seen in novels from this era centered around women. She pursues what she wants and believes that she deserves to have it, despite having learned from her grandmother, and society, that her value as a person is determined by men and she should feel lucky if a man with land or a decent job wants her...There is so much to consider and appreciate in Their Eyes Were Watching God from a plot and character perspective, but Hurston's style elevates it to a work of genius...continued
Full Review
(965 words)
(Reviewed by Lisa Butts).
While it's now considered a classic of American literature, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God was not especially well-received at the time of its publication in 1937. It was Hurston's second novel (after Jonah's Gourd Vine), and she had also published poetry, co-written a play with Langston Hughes, and received two Guggenheim fellowships for her anthropological work.
The book received many positive reviews in the press; the New York Times Book Review declared, "Indeed, from first to last this is a well nigh perfect story–a little sententious at the start, but the rest is simple and beautiful and shining with humor." However, some of Hurston's peers had other opinions. Richard Wright famously complained of its "...
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