Their Eyes Were Watching God

My interest sagged toward the middle, and I almost decided this was a book to be tasted, not wholly read. But then Janie, Tea Cup, and the others in the ‘Glades failed to take the departure of the Seminoles seriously, nor their warning of an approaching hurricane. From then on, I couldn’t stop.
Janie irritated me in the first half of the book; life seemed to her a choice between lying under a flowering pear tree or being some man’s mule. Not that I failed to understand her preference for the one over the other, but was there no third option?
Her relationship with her third husband, Tea Cup, finally offered that third option: a chance to combine autonomy with responsibility, a love based on mutual respect. This is despite an show more unpromising start when he makes off with her emergency money and disappears for two days. He is disarmingly open about his shortcomings, but this gives Janie her voice.
Another initial hurdle was easier for me to jump over. That was the orthography with which Hurston approximates the speech of Florida Blacks. It forced me to slow my reading pace, but that was not a bad thing: It freed me to read with the ear as well as the eye, revealing the creative and eloquent beauty of the spoken word.
The narrator’s voice differs from the dialog she reports, yet equals it in freshness and beauty. When Janie’s second marriage deteriorates, the narrator writes: “The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor.” Further, “For the first time she could see a man’s head naked of its skull.”
This book abounds with fresh imagery and unforgettable characters. It was well worth reading. show less

Their Eyes Were Watching God is listed on the 1001 Books That You Should Read Before You Die list, so of course I knew of its existence, but if I had known that it included so many of the elements that hold my attention I would have read it earlier.
This story is the trials, tribulations, love, love lost, and so much more of Janie. Janie is everything that I love about well written characters in quality literature. I know nothing of her life first hand. I have never been a black woman living her time, and I haven't had any of the trials and tribulations that she has had, yet...She is the most relatable of characters. Zora Neale Hurston did the most amazing thing in the way that she gifted me the ability to understand, see, and feel so show more much of Janie's life.
Janie and Tea Cake's love story is the portion that I was so drawn to. I will not spoil anything here, but I just need you to know how beautifully flawed and fricked up it is at times. From a reader's standpoint, this adds all sorts of internal conflict and later, a better understanding. Oh my gosh! So good!
Let me tell you, this will be a tough one to get settled into for some readers. The story is not complicated, although it is deep, but the language, particularly the dialogue is written in authentic slang. "I" is always written as "Ah", "That" as "Dat", etc. For this reason, I am not labeling this one as a good place to start if you are looking to jump into the genre.
That being said, if you are willing to take the challenge, please do. This book is the most highlighted and noted book that I have ever read. The deeper meaning within Janie's words, her experiences, the insightful quotes, were all too amazing to pass up. show less

This book makes me glad to be a reader. I was transported back to another time and place in America's history. Through the eyes and voice of Janie Crawford, granddaughter of a slave, it's possible to know the complexities of living in rural Florida during a time when black women were treated much like mules and could only hope to marry a decent man who didn't beat them.

Janie was different. Early in the book, she had a life-changing awakening under a fragrant, life-filled pear tree after which she was unwilling to settle for the typical dreary life of most black women. Janie had a spark of hope and longing that couldn't be extinguished by a harsh life. This dreamer of dreams is easily one of the most unforgettable characters in show more literature I have met.

Hurston writes with extravagant prose in the narrator's voice; switching to the vivid vernacular of her colorful characters in the dialog which is central to the book. Her words are a veritable feast of images and sounds that you will want to read closely to absorb the rich detail. This is one of the few books that might be more meaningful in the audio version. Or, you can do as I did, and simply read some of this marvelous language aloud. show less

11.24.2024 Read this as a GR group On the Southern Trail selection for November. This is what I thought this time around:

This was my second read, a slower, fuller read. Now it's double love for me.

I'd say that the story is about exactly what Hurston has Janie announce in the beginning: it's about a woman finally making it to the "Grand Lodge" of living. There are sublime passages throughout about Janie's struggle to get there. And make it she did, finally fully participating in a community, enjoying it with a man that made her laugh and feel good to be alive. She got her hands dirty, her hair mussy. She danced, sang, and laughed too loud. She got to put in her "dozens" (the banter of insults) without remonstration.

What she reached was a show more distinctly female experience that included navigating among men with manly egos broken on the rack of White America, who in turn used violence of word and deed against those even weaker.

In the end, Janie (and Hurston, too, I think) did not offer a single apology for surviving after being made of mud by God, broken into a million pieces. She still glittered.

It is sad how much flap Hurston took for this perspective. Her literary contemporaries, Wright and Ellison, were part of the broken men, strongly rejected a realistic aspect of their culture. They couldn't embrace it as valid as any other culture is because they wanted a place of respect at the White table. Even the later 2017 Trudier Harris thesis didn't accept, in my opinion, the fullness of the messge of the novel. She discounted Janie by using the concept of "infertility," as if fertility is somehow a kind of overriding worthiness. (Insert idiotic Single Cat Lady comment here.)

Thankfully there were and are other African-Americans that see and share Hurston's larger perspective. In my copy of the novel there is a splendid literary Afterword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr where he writes, "...her work celebrates rather than moralizes." Yes! Hurston celebrated her culture, and especially given the time it was written, that is her genius. And I can't express how much I loved that.

Another intellectual giant, James Baldwin, in his 1963 The Fire Next Time made the same point in essay form as Hurston made in this novel: that African-Americans should not modify their culture, their souls, so as to be accepted by White Americans. Baldwin reminds us that White Americans hurt themselves, hurt their very own souls, by their prejudices. Hurston's vision of her culture's "glittering," was echoed in Baldwin's vision of cultures uniting as "all the stars aflame."

In her 1928 essay "How it Feels to Be Colored Me", Hurston writes she is not "tragically colored" and explains "No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife."

So that's exactly how I read this work--as a genius ode to the joys of life, even as the world was, is, and always is so very worthy of weeping.

05.27.2020 First reading review:
I have just closed Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Aka I-am-not-tragically-colored-Hurston.*

It took a few chapters, to begin getting those brain zing "Oh!" feelings. There's something here. I went on. Started getting a deeper pleasure and became awash in various things to think about. Oh! I was reading a lyrical and ethnographic ode to joy. I was reading an anthropological snapshot of the black American south of the 1930s. I was reading early feminism, in the best sense of that word. I became fully engaged and sighed at the end.

It was one of those times I wished I was a Book Club kind of person. Who did the three men Janie marry represent from the broader world? Why isn't romantic love generally considered as a vitally important human condition to write about, except when it causes high drama or trauma? Did I think Janie's relationship with Tea Cake was a healthy one? How deliberate was it that Hurston wrote about an exclusive black American experience without much mention of whites and none as distinct characters?

I pecked around a bit to learn more of the back story about Hurston and this novel.

I saw that Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, her peers, more than missed her contribution, they dismissed it. Ellison called Their Eyes a "blight." Wright was equally scathing, reviewing the work as a deliberate kowtowing to white readers' stereotypes. I'm suspicious of their motives, myself, wondering if they didn't have their important political socio-economic blinders on. Bah. She didn't see her life as a "plight" -- although Lord knows, she didn't have it easy, especially near the end. I wish Hurston would have been alive to enjoy the accolades and profits, and sorry she had to have known some unrighteous stings.

Now I gotta give myself a cheer on this last little bit, a touch of serendipity. This was my first book choice after my personal, big To Read dump where I deleted 600 titles that over the years I had added due to some ridiculous sense of immortality. This book is exactly the kind for which I was clearing the decks. Hope it's a good sign of more things to come.

Time to go back and read the foreword by Edwidge Danticat and the afterword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. for a serious post-read craving.

Update: I've read the foreword and the afterword and the special sections including a timeline and a couple of essays by Valerie Boyd. Cravings satisfied for now. Man, Gates is awesome. Bravo HarperCollins.

A humble one hundred thanks to Alice Walker for resurrecting Hurston's work in the 1970s.

*A quick must-read is Hurston's essay "How It Feels to be Colored Me." A lovely 10 minute audio rendition can be heard on Youtube here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cgjj6Pp7Co show less

After I finished reading this, I felt like Pheoby: "Ah done growed ten feet higher from jus' listenin' tuh you, Janie."

Although some of this book was troubling to this 21st-century feminist, when the book and its protagonist Janie are taken on their own terms, it's a compelling story, an epic romance, and a womanist version of the heroic quest. Above all, it does what every excellent book does: help us learn more about what it means to be human.

First sentence: 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.

ETA: I've read this one so many times. I just absolutely love this one. I believe this is my third time to review it for the blog???? I will say that the more times I read it, the more complex I find it. Teacake and Janie's relationship is *SO* complex. On the show more one hand, as a reader, I see the abusive nature of it at times. He even takes pride in his ability to "beat" his wife, his woman, Janie. The fact that he's proud that she's publicly seen with bruises visible all over her--is disgusting and revolting. The narration--the narrative--takes this so matter-of-factly. It wasn't DANGER, DANGER, DANGER. No, it was that's just facts. Men beat women they love, end of story. In particular, the narrative points out that while white men oppress black men, black men oppress black women. Almost like a coping mechanism. It is heartbreaking as a reader to see. On the other hand, this is the only relationship [romantic, sexual] relationship in the novel where Janie has agency, has voice. Her first two relationships she had no agency, no voice, no choice. Teacake and Janie were more equals. Janie absolutely loved him heart-soul-body. She didn't really "love" or even like or respect her first two husbands. So contemporary readers have to contemplate was this relationship good? healthy? abusive? bad? Hurston's characters are so human, so flawed. There are no simple answers.

Original review:

I've read Their Eyes Were Watching God a handful of times now. (I first read it in college.) This book by Zora Neale Hurston is just beautiful and compelling. Every time I reread it I'm reminded just how beautiful and how compelling. I never quite forget, mind you. But every time I pick the book up, I'm swept into the story and experience it all over again. (The best kind of book to reread!)

Janie is the heroine of Their Eyes Were Watching God. There is a framework to the story that allows the reader to come full circle with Janie. Readers first see Janie through an outsider perspective, a gossiping group.

So the beginning of this was a woman and she had come back from burying the dead... 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 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. (1)

One from the group is Janie's best friend, Pheoby, she leaves the group after a few pages, and goes to her friend bringing a much welcomed plate of food. Then, together, they talk. Janie tells her friend her story--her whole story--framing things just so, explaining and justifying as need arises. It's honest and emotional.

Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches. (8)

To keep it short: Janie was raised by her grandmother; when she came of age (16 or so), her grandma arranged a marriage for Janie to an older man; when that marriage failed to bloom in love and happiness, Janie is swept off her feet by a traveler passing by; she leaves her first husband and is married to a second; the two settle in Florida and are influential founders of the black community; after the third husband dies, Janie finally, finally, finally falls in love, but, is Tea Cake the love of her life perfectly perfect?! Of course not! Pheoby knew her when she was married to the second husband, when she was Janie Stark. Now, she's come back to that community without Tea Cake, and everyone wants to know EVERYTHING that has happened in the past two years.

Favorite quotes:

'Dat's you, Alphabet, don't you know yo' ownself?' (9)

Oh to be a pear tree--any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world! She was sixteen. She had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her. Where were the singing bees for her? Nothing on the place nor in her grandma's house answered her. She searched as much of the world as she could from the top of the front steps and then went on down to the front gate and leaned over to gaze up and down the road. Looking, waiting, breathing short with impatience. Waiting for the world to be made. (11)

Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman. (25)

Her old thoughts were going to come in handy now, but new words would have to be made and said to fit them. (32)

It must have been the way Joe spoke out without giving her a chance to say anything one way or another that took the bloom off of things. (43)

Every morning the world flung itself over and exposed the twon to the sun. (51)

Janie stood where he left her for unmeasured time and thought. She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her. Then she went inside there to see what it was. It was her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered. But looking at it she saw that it never was the flesh and blood figure of her dreams. Just something she had grabbed up to drape her dreams over. In a way she turned her back upon the image where it lay and looked further. She had no more blossomy openings dusting pollen over her man, neither any glistening young fruit where the petals used to be. She found that she had a host of thoughts she had never expressed to him, and numerous emotions she had never let Jody know about. Things packed up and put away in parts of her heart where he could never fidn them. She was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen. She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them. (72)

All next day in the house and store she thought resisting thoughts about Tea Cake. She even ridiculed him in her mind and was a little ashamed of the association. But every hour or two the battle had to be fought all over again. She couldn't make him look just like any other man to her. He looked like the love thoughts of women. He could be a bee to a blossom--a pear tree blossom in the spring. He seemed to be crushing scent out of the world with his footsteps. Crushing aromatic herbs with every step he took. Spices hung about him. He was a glance from God. (106)

The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time. They sat in company with the other in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God. (160)

No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep. (184)

Have you read Their Eyes Were Watching God? What did you think? show less

I found the vernacular a bit hard to read at times, I had to slow my reading pace in sections where there was a lot of dialogue. But it was worth slowing down for. The story is one of practicality and hardship giving way to confidence and self-assurance. Some passages were so beautiful I had to stop and read them again, particularly the section from which the title comes, and the following one.

"The familiar people and things had failed her so she hung over the gate and looked up the road towards way off. She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman."