Zora Neale Hurston: Novels & Stories

by Zora Neale Hurston, Cheryl A. Wall (Editor)

When she died in poverty and obscurity in 1960, all of Zora Neale Hurston's books were out of print. Today her groundbreaking works, suffused with the culture and traditions of African-Americans and the poetry of black speech, have won her recognition as one of the most significant African-American writers.

This volume, with its companion, Zora Neale Hurston: Folklore, Memoirs & Other Writings brings together for the first time all of Hurston's best writings in one authoritative set. "Folklore is the arts of the people," Hurston wrote, "before they find out that there is any such thing as art."

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Short Stories, Literature, Novels, Cultural, American

1054 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1995

About the author

Novels, including Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and nonfiction writings of American folklorist Zora Neale Hurston give detailed accounts of African American life in the South.

In 1925, Hurston, one of the leaders of the literary renaissance, happening in Harlem, produced the short-lived literary magazine Fire!! alongside Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman shortly before she entered Barnard College. This literary movement developed into the Harlem renaissance.

Hurston applied her Barnard ethnographic training to document African American folklore in her critically acclaimed book Mules and Men alongside fiction Their Eyes Were Watching God . She also assembled a folk-based performance dance group that recreated her Southern tableau with one performance on Broadway.

People awarded a Guggenheim fellowship to Hurston to travel to Haiti and conduct research on conjure in 1937. Her significant work ably broke into the secret societies and exposed their use of drugs to create the Vodun trance, also a subject of study for fellow dancer-anthropologist Katherine Dunham, then at the University of Chicago.

In 1954, the Pittsburgh Courier assigned Hurston, unable to sell her fiction, to cover the small-town murder trial of Ruby McCollum, the prosperous black wife of the local lottery racketeer, who had killed a racist white doctor. Hurston also contributed to Woman in the Suwanee County Jail , a book by journalist and civil rights advocate William Bradford Huie.

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Life among the crackers in Florida. The lead character is swept off her feet and into a more or less happy marriage, with lots of interesting life events along the way. Her husband is quite a piece of work--devious, harsh, fun-loving, aggressive, and sometimes rough—so basically, an old-style love story. Interesting views of Florida in the early 1900s, when it was just starting to develop economically.

[Holyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hurston is a master of short fiction. Never before have I enjoyed short fiction as I did when reading the selections in this compilation. I wanted each story to continue and wondered about the characters once they were gone.
Her novels are fascinating and give life to characters in a way that I have rarely experienced. I am glad I decided to come back and give her writing another try.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Zora Neale Hurston was an African-American novelist and anthropologist who rose to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance and wrote the classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Sadly, much of Ms. Hurston’s fictional work were not popular with the public at large until well after her death in 1960. This volume from the Library of America gathers four of her fictional novels and a few of her short stories, including Their Eyes Were Watching God and Moses, Man of the Mountain. Through this collection, one can read the full breadth of Ms. Hurston’s fictional talent and all the good and bad elements of it.

For my full review, check out my book blog post here.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

The years took all the fight out of Janie's face. For a while she thought it was gone from her soul. no matter what Jody did, she said nothing. she had learned how to talk some and leave some. She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels. Sometimes she stuck out into the future, imagining her life different from what it was. But mostly she lived between her hat and her heels, with her emotional disturbances like shade patterns in the woods--come and gone with the sun. She got nothing from Jody except what money could buy, and she was giving away what she didn't value.

Now and again she thought of a country road at sun-up and considered flight. To where? To what? Then too she considered thirty-five is twice seventeen and nothing was the same at all.

"Maybe he ain't nothin'," she cautioned herself, "but he is something in my mouth. He's got tuh be else Ah ain't got nothin' tuh lie for. Ah'll lie and say he is. If Ah don't, life won't be nothin' but uh store and uh house."

She didn't read books so she didn't know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop. Man attempting to climb to painless heights from the dung hill.

Then one day she sat and watched the shadow of herself going about tending store and prostrating itself before Jody, while all the time she herself sat under a shady tree with the wind blowing through her hair and her clothes. Somebody near about making summertime out of lonesomeness.

This was the first time it happened, but after a while it got so common she ceased to be surprised. It was like a drug. In a way it was good because it reconciled her to things. She got so she received all things with the stolidness of the earth which soaks up urine and perfume with the same indifference.

[Stephen Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moses Man of the Mountain is really pretty bad; Jonah's Gourd Vine is okay; Their Eyes Were Watching God and Seraph on the Suwanee are brilliant. The short stories, of which there are nine, are equally variable. Significantly more great stuff than bad here, but the bad stuff keeps the omnibus as a whole from being itself a great collection.

[Kristopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn't recommend Zora Neale Hurston enough. When she does fall short of her immense ability, she still offers much more than the usual writer. I would suggest finding her memoirs and folklore collection, too, as it will provide greater insight into her entire work. Start with Their Eyes Were Watching God and read several of her tightly written stories. Savor the dialogue and play, enjoy the setting of rural Florida. Move on to her lesser works with an eye for her development as an artist and what she does achieve, rather than how she fails. It's worth it. Highlights: Their Eyes, "Sweat," "Gilded Six-bits," and really most of the stories. Seraph requires patience, critically and narratively, but yields great reward.

[Lorena Santos Lozano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although, this is not the actual copy that I read, Their Eyes Were Watching God is one of my favorite books. I first read it in an American Literature course. There are some gorgeous scenes that Hurston lays out in the book-- Janie beneath the pear tree for instance. Someone once said that this was her favorite love story of all time. But I question that this book is a real love story between two people. Perhaps Janie's found independence, self-respect, self-realization......?

[Martin Bihl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jonah's Gourd Vine - finished 10.21.23

Their Eyes Were Watching God - finished 08.11.24

Moses, Man of the Mountain - finished 06.07.25

[James F · Rating 4 out of 5]

{Partial review, stories only}

Zora Neale Hurston was one of the key figures in the "Harlem Renaissance" of Black writers, as well as one of the first Black anthropologists. I'm in the process of reading her books because I'm leading a book discussion at the library next month on Their Eyes Were Watching God. Her four novels, and this collection of short stories are published in a single volume in the Library of America series, so I'm borrowing that from the library as one of my readings, but I'm going to review the five books separately since the novels were published that way and I have a couple of them myself in separate editions. I'm also reading the Collected Plays (since those are mostly short I'm reviewing it as one book) and possibly a couple of her nonfiction books; I'm reading everything in chronological order but since all but one of these stories were written before the first novel I decided to read the last one and review the stories first.

The nine stories chosen here were written between 1921 and 1939; all but the last were written by 1934, the date of the first novel. In probable order of writing, the collection begins with three early stories, "John Redding Goes to Sea" (1921) and "Drenched in Light" (1924), which deal with adventurous children whose families try to hold them back to the traditional impoverished life of their small towns, and "Spunk" (1925), a tale of violence and revenge which she later made into a play of the same title. "Sweat" (1926) is about a dysfunctional marriage. "The Bone of Contention" (1929), a comic story about a trial, was the basis of her plays "De Turkey and de Law" and (in collaboration with Langston Hughes) "The Mule Bone". "The Book of Harlem", one of my favorites, is a very short story about a young man who comes to Harlem from the South, written as if it were a book of the Bible. "The Gilded Sixpence" (1933) is a story about a marriage; "Fire in the Cloud" (1934) is a new take on Moses at the end of the wanderings; and the final story, "A Story in Harlem Slang", is about two "pimps" (the word didn't mean what it does today) written as the title says in Harlem slang.

Reading these stories together with the plays written at the same time, I was struck by the connections between them, and I'm sure that there are also foreshadowings of the novels. The stories are all worth reading.

[John Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't know much about Zora Neale Hurston until reading this volume. Having read it, my assessment is that while she certainly is worth reading, she cannot be placed among the higher ranks of American authors. In intention and execution she is middlebrow only, though it has become politically correct to rate her higher.

One noteworthy aspect of Hurston's writing is her use of the actual language and speech patterns of rural southern blacks of her era (the early twentieth century). While this decision certainly was bold, it can make passages nearly unintelligible unless read at a very slow pace. Good dialog doesn't necessarily replicate actual speech; rather, it merely provides the flavor of that speech while cleaning up the verbal stutters and other impediments to understanding that appear when people actually speak. Hurston perhaps could have improved her writing by clarifying her dialog while retaining the essential flavor.

Hurston also is noteworthy in that while her primary subject was race in a very prejudiced time and place, and she didn't shy away from using the infamous n-word, she did not drop to the level of simply taking sides, as so often happens today. Rather, she attempted to weave it all together into a single tapestry; indeed, she was more critical of how men treated women than how whites treated blacks.

[Marilyn Sue Michel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hurston is a good writer. "Moses, Man of the Mountain" continues to be a bit strange all the way to the end, due to using African American vernacular from the 19th century for Hebrews in Egypt. Clearly Hurston was writing a good story for her preferred readers. I don't know too much about traditional stories about Moses, so I can't evaluate whether this story is in accord with others. Good reading!

[Sarah]

Life is a tale of adventures. These adventures do not just talk about going to a place..it might just as well be about a particular moment in a lapse of time.
I loved how this books talks about things that change over a period of time..thereby ending a monotony. But what if the breaking of the monotony causes a change that is adverse?
Reading this book you will realise how the civilizations that once flourished the mankind now reeks of death and destruction.

[Jim Golmon · Rating 5 out of 5]

The 3 novels were the part of this book that I preferred. Of those, Their Eyes Were Watching God was off the charts terrific; certainly one of the best novels that I've ever read.

That it was written by a black woman born in Alabama in 1891 makes it that much more extraordinary given the horrible social conditions she would have faced then and there as an Afro-American female.

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/2 stars

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I totally understand why her works are considered classics. Her use of language is just amazing.

[Carlo(tta) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read “Their Eyes Were Watching God” 11/30/22-12/02/22

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

some things come along and save your life, this book did for me. exquisitely soulful, Southern, flamboyant, and holy.

[doug.whatzup · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some years ago, when I had a real job and more disposable income than sense and time, I subscribed to the Library of America service which sent me a thick, clothbound anthology of American writing each and every month. I had promised myself that these books would not just become decorations on a shelf but would actually be read, and I tried to keep that vow. I really did.

That didn’t happen, of course, and as a consequence the two unopened volumes of Zora Neale Hurston sat prettily on my bookshelf for who knows how many years. I’d never heard of her before the first volume arrived, and I’ve really never been drawn to what I guess you would term “black literature,” so she just sat there taking up space.

I don’t know what it was that finally compelled me to take the first volume down and begin reading. I suppose it had something to do with the current conversation about anti-racism, a notion that strikes me as kind of odd. I mean, having seen it up close and personal while attending a prep school in the South, I deplore racism, but apparently that's no longer enough. I also get the concept of white privilege, although I think privilege is more of a socio-economic thing than a race thing.

But race seems to be the prism through which so many view every aspect of human life these days, and I was starting to feel ashamed at having neglected these fairly expensive volumes of Zora for so long. Consequently, at long last I took down and opened up Volume 1, “Novels and Stories.”

Once in awhile life surprises the hell out of you, I guess, because I wasn’t expecting to stumble across maybe one of the greatest American writers who ever lived. I mean, I fucking love this woman’s writing. The only person I can think of who might top her is Mark Twain; she’s that insightful, that masterful with dialog and imagery, so full of surprises and delights.

Of the four novels, “There Eyes Were Watching God,” is the one most would be familiar with. The others - “Jonah Gourd Vine,” “Moses, Man of the Mountain” and “Seraph on the Suwanee” – are each revelatory in their own way. The short stories at the end, some of which were never published during Hurston’s lifetime, are absolute gems. (To be honest, I couldn’t get through “Story in Harlem Slang” which is literally a story told in Harlem slang; it’s less a story than an experiment in expository dialect.)

I'm fighting the impulse to expound on how reading Hurston has influenced my thoughts on race and race relations, but I think I'll resist that temptation until after I've read Volume 2, "Folklore, Memoirs, & Other Writings." For now, I'll only say this: Hurston should be required reading in every high school in America, right alongside Twain.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

When this book starts, Moses hasn't been born yet. His mother is in labor and his family is praying that it is a girl. Around that time period, the Pharoah is killing all the boy babies because he doesn't want any of them to take his throne. When Moses is finally born, the family is planning to hide out somewhere because they don't want to lose Moses. Instead, they put him in a basket and float him down the Nile. They count on his sister, Miriam, to watch the basket float to the designated spot. While she was watching for the basket, she falls asleep but when she wakes up, she sees the Pharoah's daughter holding baby Moses. When Moses grows older, the reader learns that his uncle, Ta-Phar, is basically a jerk to Moses. He torments Moses because he has an idea that Moses is a Hebrew and Hebrews do not belong in that land. Later on in the story, Moses' wife does find out that he is Hebrew and is very angry with Moses because she "kissed a Hebrew". At this point, Moses is frustrated.

My favorite part of this book is when Moses is floating down the Nile. I enjoyed this part because it reminded me of the movie "The Prince of Egypt". As a kid, I used to watch this movie all the time and I learned about it in church. But the part I didn't like about the book was the beginning. It seemed to me that it started out slow and it didn't really have anything to do with this book.

My recommendation for this book is to readers who are familiar with the Moses Bible story. It will help you understand the book better if you have a little knowledge behind it. The age group that this book should go to is definitely high school grades and up. Sometimes the wording can be tricky and younger readers may not understand.

In this novel, Hurston took a piece of Egyptian history and made it her own. The dialect, though, is more African American than anything else. Moses takes a long journey to get to Exodus, the leading of the Jews out of Egypt. It's a twist through time.

[Colleen Mertens · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read all four of Hurston's novels. I originally read "Their Eyes Were Watching God" in college and loved it. I wanted to reread it now many years later. I still love this book. I thought the characters were realistic and that I knew people like them. The descriptions of the towns and lifestyles of the time make the story come to life. After rereading that, I read "Jonah's Gourd Vine" which loosely tells the story of Hurston's parents. It was one of my favorites. After that came "Moses, Man of the Mountain" which tells the story of Moses from a perspective that includes some of the folklore that Hurston drove around the South collecting. It was definitely not a tradition version of the Bible story but it was well-written and well imagined. I finished with "Seraph on the Swanee" which I thought was most interesting. The characters in that novel are not typical for Hurston but still live in her universe. The growth of the main character throughout the novel was intriguing to see. All the books can be a challenge to read since Hurston writes in dialect but they are worth the time.

[Lore89]

A controversial novel by the time it was Published, as they talk about the variety of relationships and problems that a black girl named Janie, after the experience of 3 marriages, starting from her 16 years because of her grandmother’s obsession.

The book started in Eatonville, which was the first black community in USA.
Janie thought she was white, because she lived with more girls and they were white skin.
She kissed a bad guy and that’s when her grandmother decided to give her a better life, to find her a husband who gives her all she needs and protects her.

But she never felt completed so she changed to another and another man, but it was the same story.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't read this whole selection; I read Jonah's Gourd Vine, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and some of the short stories. I found Jonah's Gourd Vine to be average; I didn't have any feelings for it. I felt the same for some of the stories. However, Their Eyes Were Watching God and some of the short stories were amazing. I love Hurston's style although it takes some getting used to. The story plots were amazing, though.

[Angel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this in graduate school for a class in African American literature. It was not one of my favorites. That I gave it two stars just means it was something I barely liked. To be honest, her folklore work is more interesting to read. The novel is considered a classic, so if you want to say you have read some classic works, this is one of them.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really great literary fiction. One of the best books I have ever read. Zora Neale Hurston got a lot of flack from the black male Harlem renaissance clique about this one because of its depiction of men. It is a feminist work that speaks of the strength of women and their ability to determine their own lives no matter what adversity is thrown their way. Excellent.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Jonah's Gourd Vine from this collection of several books and short stories. It was Hurston's first novel and based on her father. It was a great read. Loved her sense of place, characters and phrases and bits of folk lore. It is heavy with dialect but I didn't have much of a problem. There were some words, phrases I didn't understand. There's a glossary in the back that explains most.

[Alaya Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to read "Their Eyes Were Watching God" for class back in high school. I really liked the book and was intrigued by Zora Neale Hurston. As a followup, I bought this book about a year later and read it from cover to cover. All I can say is that I fell in love with Zora Neale Hurston as a writer!

[Jaha knight · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to see the culmination of great words put to paragraphs and then turned into pages that comprise a book of inspiration. I learned a lot from the stories in this book. I have to say Jonah's Gourd Vine is the best book I've read by Zora Neale Hurston.

[Flynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

So "There Eyes were Watching God" was one I had never read, although I always had a sneaking suspicion that I should, and I really was rewarded with this one. The language totally blew my mind and was one of those books which I felt was really expressing truth, which is a rare find.

[Stef · Rating 5 out of 5]

AudioFile Earphones Award, Exceptional Audio Performance by Renee Joshua-Porter. Includes six short stories: "Drenched in Light," "The Conscience of the Court," "Muttsy," "The Gilded Six-Bits," John Redding Goes to Sea," and "Sweat."

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great collection of Zora Hurston's writings. I still really like Their Eyes Were Watching God but also was very impressed with Seraph on the Suwanee. She was an excellent writer and I'm glad to have found a publication that contains more than the well-known Their Eyes Were Watching God.