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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780061120060
ISBN: 0061120065
Label: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 256
Publication Date: 2006-06-01
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Product Release Date: 2006-05-30
Studio: Harper Perennial Modern Classics

At the height of the Harlem Renaissance during the 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston was the preeminent black woman writer in the United States. She was a sometime-collaborator with Langston Hughes and a fierce rival of Richard Wright. Her stories appeared in major magazines, she consulted on Hollywood screenplays, and she penned four novels, an autobiography, countless essays, and two books on black mythology. Yet by the late 1950s, Hurston was living in obscurity, working as a maid in a Florida hotel. She died in 1960 in a Welfare home, was buried in an unmarked grave, and quickly faded from literary consciousness until 1975 when Alice Walker almost single-handedly revived interest in her work.

Of Hurston's fiction, Their Eyes Were Watching God is arguably the best-known and perhaps the most controversial. The novel follows the fortunes of Janie Crawford, a woman living in the black town of Eaton, Florida. Hurston sets up her characters and her locale in the first chapter, which, along with the last, acts as a framing device for the story of Janie's life. Unlike Wright and Ralph Ellison, Hurston does not write explicitly about black people in the context of a white world--a fact that earned her scathing criticism from the social realists--but she doesn't ignore the impact of black-white relations either:

It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road. It was the time to hear things and talk. These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins. But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgment.

One person the citizens of Eaton are inclined to judge is Janie Crawford, who has married three men and been tried for the murder of one of them. Janie feels no compulsion to justify herself to the town, but she does explain herself to her friend, Phoeby, with the implicit understanding that Phoeby can "tell 'em what Ah say if you wants to. Dat's just de same as me 'cause mah tongue is in mah friend's mouf."

Hurston's use of dialect enraged other African American writers such as Wright, who accused her of pandering to white readers by giving them the black stereotypes they expected. Decades later, however, outrage has been replaced by admiration for her depictions of black life, and especially the lives of black women. In Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston breathes humanity into both her men and women, and allows them to speak in their own voices. --Alix Wilber

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Zora's Masterpiece!
Review: Zora Neale Hurston will probably be remembered best as the author of this novel. She writes in dialogue or dialect in the South especially to help establish the realism and relationships between the characters. This book is about Janie Crawford, the granddaughter of Nanny Crawford (who was a former slave who had a child with her white master known as Leafy). Nanny wisely leaves the plantation with her baby. She raises Leafy who gets raped by her teacher and gives birth to Janie. Leafy abandons her baby daughter in the care of her grandmother who raised her with other children. It wasn't until 6 that Janie realized that she was different from the children that her grandmother cared for. Janie realized that she was black or African American. Until then, she was just one of the kids. As an adult, she yearns for love from a man. She is married off to an old farmer, Logan Killicks. She leaves him for Joe Stark and finally there was Teacake Magee, the love of her life. This book is a classic. In order to teach it, I would recommend the movie with Halle Berry and the audio version with Ruby Dee who also played Nanny in the television film version. The audio helps bring alive the rich dialect that Zora recreated to help establish the realism of life in the South during the 1930s and Great Depression.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Their Eyes Were Watching Janie
Review: In this charming tale of one woman's experience with love set in small closely knit African American Southern communities we are introduced to the life and culture of American blacks in the 1930's. The author who is also an anthropologist tells the tale in the heavy black dialect that was so prevelent in small rural southern towns. The author's technique in using the vernacular created a rich atmosphere and back drop for Janie's experiences with love and spiritual growth. I gave the book 4 stars, because understanding the dialect was challenging for me. A reader more familiar with the dialect would have an easier time with the story. However, interspersed with the dialect came crisp clear and charming images narrated in the author's own articulate voice. Some of the images are simply charming. One example is the following: "The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor. It was there to shake hands whenever company came to visit, but it never went inside the bedroom again." (pg.71) "She took careful stock of herself,then combed her hair and tied it back up again. Then she starched and ironed her face, forming it into judt what people wanted to see.

In the end Janie has triumphantly broadened her horizens and possiblites. This has brought her peace.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: my opinion on Their Eyes Were Watching God
Review: In the story, the title is used as a phrase when the hurricane occurs. I believe that the God whom Janie and Tea Cake watch stands as a compassionate God who encourages them to discover both the painful and joyous aspects of love, both of which can lead to self-discovery, forgiveness and redemption. In my perception, this God has such a capacity for love and magnanimity that it defies gender.

However, the God of the first two husbands (Logan Killicks and Jody Starks) is definitely a patriarchal figure who imparts undeserved punishments.

I don't interpret any of the characters questioning God but I do believe they maintain a curiosity about Him. They watch to discover who He is, they watch to catch a glimpse of His power, they watch to receive a unending stream of His love.

Just as we do.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Great!
Review: I recieved my book right on time and it was in great shape! I paid much cheaper then I would have if I had bought in in the store. The book was also a great read too. I'm very pleased with my shopping experience.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: While other eyes were watching her
Review: 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.

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