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Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston

Start date: March 1, 2021

Finish date: March 31, 2021

Discussion: New School Classics- 1915-2005

Why we're reading this: March 2021 New School Classic Read
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New School Classics- 1915-2005

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What Members Thought

Jan 06, 2020 Kelly_Hunsaker_reads ... rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-2020, american-lit, 1001-books, classics, race, racism

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God is, on its surface, a woman’s story of love (with the three men she married.) But it is much deeper than that. It is about a woman's self-discovery. She finds her voice, her identity, as she travels through her life. This is a book about being black and female in the early twentieth century. The language, setting, dialogue, and story all emphasize that the story is a bout a woman of color. And it is textured and beautiful.

Janie Crawford is our pr ...more

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Feb 11, 2013 Julie rated it liked it

Shelves: fin-2013, 1930s-fiction

I would have given this novel 4 stars if it hadn't had the horrid dialogue written in a Southern dialect. I almost put the book down and stopped reading, the dialogue bugged me so much. I hate it when an author writes in cockney or Southern black or Asian pigeon English or whatever dialect they are attempting. I have an imagination. I can imagine the accent - I don't need to read "Naw, Ah ain't git no mo' but den Ah mit git mo' n yo kin say later." And pages and pages of it. UGH. Me love you lon I would have given this novel 4 stars if it hadn't had the horrid dialogue written in a Southern dialect. I almost put the book down and stopped reading, the dialogue bugged me so much. I hate it when an author writes in cockney or Southern black or Asian pigeon English or whatever dialect they are attempting. I have an imagination. I can imagine the accent - I don't need to read "Naw, Ah ain't git no mo' but den Ah mit git mo' n yo kin say later." And pages and pages of it. UGH. Me love you long time. "Ello, gov'ner,ooz 'ouse is that? ....Just - stop it.

As for the plot of the novel, I enjoyed it. I read some criticism of this book about how Hurston focuses too much on the personal and not the political. Well, I happen to like the focus on the personal. I can understand and empathize with political or social movements when they are represented by individual stories. One of the ways I learn about history is by learning about a certain historical figure. I then learn about the events and people of the era by filtering them through one person or one family's story.

The more I read about Janie, the more I liked her. I also loved how Hurston wrote about life and Janie's feelings. Hurston writes, "She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman." Or how she describes Tea Cake " He seemed to be crushing scent out of the world with every step he took. He was a glance from God." I would read a certain sentence or paragraph and have to sit back and admire it for a minute.

Her portrayal of black culture at the turn of the twentieth century was fascinating to me. Janie's grandmother is a slave and her grandfather the white plantation owner. All Janie's grandmother wants for Janie is for her to marry a man successful enough that Janie doesn't have to work - so Janie can sit. Janie explains to her friend that her grandmother had lived during a time when black people couldn't sit down whenever they wanted to - they had to work. Sitting on a porch doing nothing like the white plantation women seemed wonderful to Nanny. However, Nanny hadn't thought what happens once you are sitting in the chair. About the soul crushingness of being and doing nothing. Of having no purpose in life.

I don't want to spoil the ending of the book but it was a happy ending to me. Not a perfect happy ending where nothing bad ever happens, but a happy ending in the sense that Janie finally gets to live. To let her soul breathe.
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