false 37415 38 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. <p> Of Hurston's fiction, <I>Their Eyes Were Watching God</I> 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: <blockquote> 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. </blockquote> 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 <I>does</I> 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." <p> 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 Decades later, however, outrage has been replaced by admiration for her depictions of black life, and especially the lives of black women.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 <I>Their Eyes Were Watching God</I> Zora Neale Hurston breathes humanity into both her men and women, and allows them to speak in their own voices. <I>--Alix Wilber</I> 1643555 book 1937 Their Eyes Were Watching God total:27635|5:8935|4:10094|3:6202|2:1774|1:630| 27635 107835 35184 2056 3 13 false false Tue Jul 03 03:41:44 -0700 2007 Tue Jul 03 03:45:47 -0700 2007
A) The main character was a woman, and she had something like 3 lovers throughout the book. Saucy.
B) One of these dudes was named either Teabag, Cornbread, Teabread, or Breadbag....more...]]> 1 10 false false Fri Jul 27 11:36:21 -0700 2007 Wed Aug 08 13:50:32 -0700 2007
I read this book when I was a junior in college in an American Lit class. I was looking forward to reading it when I saw it on my book list and read the back cover. I enjoy the writings of Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou, so I was loo...more...]]> 4 8 false false Wed Dec 10 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Oct 31 11:54:41 -0700 2008 Wed Dec 10 12:18:07 -0800 2008
I loved the writing style. I’m not terribly keen on poetry, per se, but Hurston’s prose felt poetic and many of the sentences beat out a st...more...]]> 4 7 false false Sat Feb 14 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Feb 13 18:51:13 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 16 13:28:02 -0800 2009 1 Their Ey...more...]]> 4 7 false false Fri Jun 13 09:22:58 -0700 2008 Thu Jan 24 16:56:41 -0800 2008 Fri Jun 13 09:22:58 -0700 2008 Their Eyes Were Watching God, I tell my students the Alice Walker headstone story and teach the book as a Black Feminist novel that is far, far ahead of its time. I noticed this year that my introduction made my students expect the protagonist, Janie, to jump from ...more...]]> 5 3 false false Fri Oct 23 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Jun 07 09:24:51 -0700 2008 Mon Oct 26 18:35:53 -0700 2009 2
Hurston's story of Janie, a fair-skinned black woman caught in the time period between the end of slavery an...more...]]> 3 3 false false Tue Feb 17 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 10 09:57:53 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 23 10:57:27 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 3 false false Fri May 02 05:46:41 -0700 2008 Thu May 15 10:53:39 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 3 false false Tue Apr 29 08:03:21 -0700 2008 Fri May 09 19:28:18 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 4 false false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Sep 11 15:08:24 -0700 2007 Sun Oct 07 21:32:14 -0700 2007 ...more...]]> 4 2 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1985 Tue Apr 01 22:49:23 -0700 2008 Tue Apr 01 22:49:23 -0700 2008 I just have impressions of the story, which may be a bit jumbled, since I haven't read this s...more...]]> 5 2 false false Sat Mar 28 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Feb 08 07:55:29 -0800 2008 Sat Mar 28 15:56:03 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Feb 26 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Wed Feb 04 17:14:47 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 26 04:13:52 -0800 2009
About a girl, Janie, who doesn't see color and doesn't know she is black until...more...]]> 1 2 false false Fri Oct 10 18:00:02 -0700 2008 Fri Oct 10 18:08:57 -0700 2008 1
It was well written, the metaphors, etc were good (I read it for an English class so I know ALL about the metaphors), the characters were well rounded, it IS a really fine example of Hurston's work.
...more...]]> 4 1 false false Thu May 08 10:12:30 -0700 2008 Thu May 15 12:07:50 -0700 2008 Their Eyes Were Watching God is a great novel to read. Zora Hurston tells the sad story of a middle age African woman. Zora reveals the story in a very poetic way and uses many dialogues. Some parts of the novel include topics of love, passion and dreams. The ...more...]]> 3 1 true true Sat Jun 28 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Apr 20 20:04:59 -0700 2008 Sun Jun 29 20:46:04 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 2 false false Tue Jan 29 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Nov 23 14:37:16 -0800 2007 Tue Jan 29 13:19:50 -0800 2008
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, set in the early 1900s, follows the life journey of an African American woman named Janie. I was drawn by Janie’s ability to adapt and remain strong, qualities that I...more...]]> 5 1 false false Fri Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1999 Mon Mar 26 13:45:08 -0700 2007 Sun Apr 01 15:14:56 -0700 2007 Zora Neale Hurston’s creation of the complex character, Janie Mae in The...more...]]> 5 2 false false Sat Feb 16 12:07:27 -0800 2008 Sat Feb 16 12:16:31 -0800 2008
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 b...more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Jan 15 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 08 14:03:13 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 15 10:01:14 -0800 2009 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=77212