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Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Novel by…
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Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Novel (original 1937; edition 2006)

by Zora Neale Hurston (Author)

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19,011343248 (3.99)1 / 969
I tried reading this book some time ago and couldn't get through the vernacular, but when I saw it as an audiobook (my local library offers hoopla) with Rudy Dee as narrator, I was delighted. The wonderful Ruby Dee's narration hits all the humor/satire marks. Only thing I can add to other reviews is that I liked that it was rich with porch-sitting characters. Also, I liked the subtle way, Janie, the main character, grows to become her own woman, considering the decade in which it was written. ( )
  PaperDollLady | Aug 3, 2018 |
English (337)  French (1)  Swedish (1)  Italian (1)  German (1)  Dutch (1)  All languages (342)
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My review of this book can be found on my YouTube Vlog at:

https://youtu.be/DP2x7m7JLjg

Enjoy!
  booklover3258 | Feb 20, 2024 |
I read this after seeing the first episode of Great American Read, and I am glad I did. Hurston wrote a masterpiece that grabbed me from the very beginning with language, characters and story. I can see myself going back to this book and devouring scenes over and over through the years.
I suggest listening to the audiobook read by Ruby Dee. This helped me get the vernacular in my mind while reading. The slow drawl of Ms. Dee is perfect for the novel. ( )
  wvlibrarydude | Jan 14, 2024 |
I loved this book. One of the best I've read in Southern lit. so far. I can't wait to read some of her other books.

I loved it again after re-reading it. ( )
1 vote DKnight0918 | Dec 23, 2023 |
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 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. ( )
1 vote HenrySt123 | Dec 17, 2023 |
This book is a real treasure---quite possibly the most beautiful piece of writing, short of the Psalms, that I've ever encountered. Parts of it literally made me feel warm inside---this author had a uniquely precious gift of language.

Here are some of my favorite passages:

pg. 20 "Put me down easy, Janie, Ah'm a cracked plate."

pg. 21 "There are years that ask questions and years that answer."

pg. 191 "Love is lak de sea. It's uh movin' thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it's different with every shore."

...and the last page, of course, which I will not include for the sake of avoiding spoilers.

I'm so so happy I read this! This will be a lifetime favorite, for sure. ( )
1 vote classyhomemaker | Dec 11, 2023 |
Slightly ashamed I wasn't aware of Zora Neale Hurston before hearing of the Peter Bagge biography. This is a beautiful book, set in early 20th century, telling the story of a Janie Crawford, an African American woman in her 40s recounting her life in Florida. The protagonist is very appealing —
a headstrong woman who has little interest in society's ideas of what she should be doing. Predominantly set in African American communities it uses a vibrant vernacular throughout, which grounds the book in a time and place, and keeps the words sparking off the page. ( )
  thisisstephenbetts | Nov 25, 2023 |
Second time reading and I rate it the same 3 stars. This time, however, I really took the time to understand and get involved in Janie's life. I found it much more rewarding second time around. I enjoyed this one though it isn't high on my books to recommend.

The character development of Janie was quite well done. I found Tea Cake a bit "too perfect". The end seemed so rushed to go from a tragedy to her place of peace and enlightenment. I would have enjoyed a bit more between the two. ( )
  MahanaU | Nov 21, 2023 |
Love is hard. Living can be hard. But there can be beauty and happiness. The story is a vignette of a different time. But the themes are timeless. ( )
  77nanci | Nov 11, 2023 |
[I listened to the audiobook version narrated by Ruby Dee]

Phenomenal.

I'm not sure if it was the fact that I listened instead of reading it, but Ruby Dee's touch to the characterization of each person in this story made it. Without it, I doubt I would have enjoyed it as much. It is a period piece come to life, with all of its colors. Listening to this book was like listening to a grandmother tell her story on a small porch while sipping lemonade or iced tea. There are rough parts, there are happy parts, and in the end, she is (somehow) right there in front of you, and you now know how she, your magnificent grandmother, got there.

I can't say if this is a must read, but I can promise that it is a must-listen. ( )
  LouLTE | Oct 7, 2023 |
I wanted to like this when I read it, although I found that I didn’t, because I was reading it to read “good” lit and be inclusive, and I found that it was about people and love and such, and being about Blacks I wanted to include wasn’t enough to make me get over my personality types things with friends and lovers, you know.

I’d probably enjoy it more if I read it again, but if a similar sort of box opened up in my reading schedule I’d probs read a third Toni Morrison or maybe a second Zora Neale, you know.

It certainly is good lit, like Jane Austen, although I suppose maybe it’s more like Dickens via the issue of dialect, kinda wandering over towards the borderline of old pop lit, you know, although it is still more like any other good-lit friends and lovers book than a ghetto romance or Twilight, not that the latter two types are inherently evil, and some people might even find them easier to read.

I think that a lot of intellectuals who read books like this mask what they really feel, if they even know themselves, and then there’s the issue of it being about a Black chick which can kinda exacerbate the thing where you distance/hide, you know. People do that with Greek stuff, too, though—you have this idea of Homer, right, that has nothing to do with the swords clashing or anything else about the poems. (shrugs) But when I first read this book I was an “intellectual”, and there were many things I would have liked to hide if that had been my standing policy, and it was embarrassing not to, you know. (I’ve deleted that review now, since it no longer reflects me.)

(shrugs) But I don’t know. Back in the 1920s, say, even the Black people in this book sided with the white men’s knowledge over the Native people’s intuition regarding the coming storm, you know….

Anyway, the point is, Janie had a number of relationships, and there was good and bad, but one at least had very strong positive elements. It was very painful and mortal, but in the end, I guess it was worth it. Tea Cake was a jerk at times, but he was also a sweet thing.

(shrugs) One of the few positive things they taught us in nerd class was that a thing about a book shouldn’t be a summary, but then also, contrariwise, after having read a book you should have some idea what it was about, you know. Not in terms of plot summary, but….

I mean, if you don’t like “good lit” you don’t like it, and if old good pop lit or whatever isn’t fun for you, it isn’t fun. But if you do like it, presumably you liked something about the book, not this bronze abstraction of the book, you know…. And you know, sometimes it’s harder to like people who don’t live in your town, but if you’re honest you might just learn that they’re people just like you, just with different personality patterns, right.
  goosecap | Aug 30, 2023 |
A classic first published in 1937 - Missing review! ( )
  MissysBookshelf | Aug 27, 2023 |
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a story about making mistakes, and having to grow and learn from those mistakes. Janie starts out her life sheltered and protected and runs off thinking that she is being repressed. She soon learns that perhaps she made a mistake, but has to learn from that. She gets a second chance and has learned and grown from her previous experiences. Every step she takes, she has to overcome some obstacle, but she marches on to become a beautiful, mature, strong woman. ( )
  LinBee83 | Aug 23, 2023 |
The lush layers of female voices—Hurston, her character Janie, and the brilliant Ruby Dee who brings them all to life through her reading/performance—made this my favorite novel of 2021. Just. So. Good. [a:Zora Neale Hurston|15151|Zora Neale Hurston|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1194472605p2/15151.jpg] mesmerized me with the poetic style that brings Janie's love of life into clear focus.

Janie inhabits and describes a world that unwinds before her as a marvel. A world where she is often swept along by the choices of others, but always maintains her own thoughts and secret hopes. Lyrical, unhurried and rich in the telling, Janie narrates her own life story with warmth and candor.

Ruby Dee's reading animates the ensemble of characters that Janie encounters. I laughed out loud at the storytellers, ached with longing, and felt Janie's anxiety during times of emotional and physical uncertainty.

I'll remember this Janie and her story for a long time. ( )
  rebwaring | Aug 14, 2023 |
I'm not finishing this. I'm having real problems with the language, and not enjoying it enough to makr up for it. ( )
  MarthaJeanne | Jul 30, 2023 |
Here's what I wrote in 2008 about this read: "A bit of American history come back to life. This novel was one of the first written by an African American women, but she and the novel fell out of favor (she died in poverty). Story of a strong-headed, full-of-life woman, in a time of trial for American Blacks (1930's); Janie Crawford marries three men and is tried for the murder of one. She and her third husband live through a hurricane in Florida, where all their eyes were watching God. Written in black slang / dialect; interesting to read." ( )
  MGADMJK | Jul 27, 2023 |
DNF due to language barrier with the speech part. ( )
  kakadoo202 | Jul 22, 2023 |
I struggled with this one at first. The entire book is written in a strong dialect that almost felt like an entirely different language. Every single time I would open the book, it would take me 1-2 pages before my brain would start to interpret things and comprehend what characters were saying. After 50 or so pages, though, that initial uptake was much faster and I was able to get right into it and start reading. The book became much more enjoyable at that point. Beautiful book, and while it has a slow start, builds and builds. The ending moved almost too fast? I wasn't quite ready for it, and it hit me really hard.

There were some beautiful moments too, here were two of my favorite quotes:

"Nanny’s head and face looked like the standing roots of some old tree that had been torn away by storm. Foundation of ancient power that no longer mattered. The cooling palma christi leaves that Janie had bound about her grandma's head with a white rag had wilted down and become part and parcel of the woman. Her eyes didn't bore and pierce. They diffused and melted Janie, the room and the world into one comprehension."

"Insensate cruelty to those you can whip, and groveling submission to those you can’t. Once having set up her idols and built altars to them it was inevitable that she would worship there. It was inevitable that she should accept any inconsistency and cruelty from her deity as all good worshippers do from theirs. All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood." ( )
  Andjhostet | Jul 4, 2023 |
Zora Neale Hurston's tale of Janie Crawford's emotional and spiritual liberation comes charged with a powerfully subtle ending. The language veers back and forth between florid black vernacular and Hurston's narrative that employs magical realism - some of the imagery in the book creeps up and surprises with its strange pull.

The fracturing of consciousness of black Americans is depicted here in the language divisions - the question of what it means to be a woman, what it means to be Black, what it means to be American - are never addressed directly but parsed throught the voices in dialogue and narration.

Edit 4/4/17:

Does Janie die from Tea Cake's bite at the end? ( )
  jonbrammer | Jul 1, 2023 |
Beautiful. A love story for all time, so much joy and satisfaction. I read Rules of Civility not long ago, and it's hard to imagine these are written about the same time period in the same country. Wildly different books, but the richness and purity of this story are so much more real to me. ( )
  KallieGrace | Jun 8, 2023 |
Classic in feminist and black literature, especially for its depiction of a relationship between a man and a woman. Written in dialect.
  VillageProject | May 19, 2023 |
I am so glad to have finally read this book of which I've heard so much about. It did not disappoint me. This is a beautiful story. ( )
  Kimberlyhi | Apr 15, 2023 |
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 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? ( )
  blbooks | Feb 15, 2023 |
"Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston is a powerful and captivating novel that explores the journey of self-discovery and liberation of a black woman named Janie Crawford. Through her journey, Janie experiences love, heartbreak, and oppression, but ultimately finds her voice and identity. The novel is written in beautiful, lyrical language that transports the reader to the rural South and captures the essence of the time period. It's a must-read for anyone looking for a compelling and thought-provoking story that challenges societal norms and celebrates the strength and resilience of the human spirit. ( )
  Bridger_B | Feb 1, 2023 |
Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is written with such a modern style, it’s hard to believe it was written just five years after something like the 1933 King Kong was released to theaters — a movie that seems so ancient in retrospect. Her writing is peppered with poetic metaphors in an effortlessness that belies how hard it must have been to wring them out onto the page. She digs into the minor feelings of humans that communicate instantly with phrases like “She turned wrongside out just standing there and feeling.” The sun doesn’t set, it plunges “into the same crack in the earth from which the night emerged.” If I underlined every bit of writing I liked, I’d be underlining every third sentence.

The novel takes place likely a decade prior to 1937, though the time frame isn’t exact. The story is told from the point of view of Janie, a black woman who looks fairly white, especially compared to other African-Americans. Janie’s grandmother, noticing her granddaughter has blossomed into a woman, marries her to one of the richest black men in the area who is many years her senior. In a short amount of time, Janie learns marriage doesn’t equate with love and runs away from her arranged husband to be with an attractive black man — again, a powerful one. With this marriage, Janie learned that short-term love and attraction doesn’t mean you love every bit of a person.

This book is not about race. Race is an undercurrent in the book, as it must be - it’s set during the era of Jim Crow laws. By placing Janie halfway between the white world and black world, she becomes a bridging figure, or sometimes a figure without a world to belong to - neither black nor white. It’s only in the last few chapters of the book that we see overt racism. Dead whites are given caskets whole dead blacks are buried without and salted with lime.

Their Eyes Were Watching God’s main focus explores women within society. What does Janie want out of her life, and marriage? When she’s in a hard place later in the book, it’s not the other “negros” that help her, it’s the white women. It’s carefully noted that if she was a dark black woman the women likely wouldn’t have helped her, but it’s also implied that the white women see a woman in trouble more than they see her ethnicity. What I’ve written is dismissive though, because it is about race, it’s all about race, it’s just buried so deep that it almost ceases to matter. Hurston’s premise is that people are people, and we all have deep, internal monologues and feelings and thoughts, and secret worlds, regardless of “race” or gender or money. We love and hurt and care and fight and claw and worship and disagree and care and hurt and love, but we all want to be liberated. Liberation isn’t only physical. Sometimes liberation is found only in love, and sometimes in the discovery of our own souls.

Like I said, I loved a lot of Hurston’s writing, but these I loved most of all:

- There are years that ask questions and years that answer. Janie had no chance to know things, so she had to ask. Did marriage end the cosmic loneliness of the unmated?
- “But Nanny, Ah wants to want him sometimes. Ah don’t want him to do all de wantin’.
- “But folks is meant to cry ‘bout somethin’ or other.”
- There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought.
- She felt far away from things and lonely.
- ...she knows what God gave women eyelashes for, too.
- 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.
- She didn’t read books so she didn’t know she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.
- Mah own mind had tuh be squeezed and crowded out tuh make room for yours in me.
- When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another.
- It was hard to love a woman that made you feel so wishful.
- She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her.
- Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place.
- “God made it so you spent yo’ old age first wid somebody else, and saved up yo’ young girl days to spend wid me.”
- She had wanted him to live so much and he was dead. No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep.
- She was too busy feeling grief to dress like grief.
- “Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.”
- Of course he wasn’t dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking.
- She called in her soul to come and see.
( )
  gideonslife | Jan 5, 2023 |
The novel explores main character Janie Crawford's "ripening from a vibrant,
but voiceless, teenage girl into a woman with her finger on the trigger of her own destiny
  CarrieFortuneLibrary | Nov 12, 2022 |
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