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Their Eyes Were Watching God Paperback – Deckle Edge, May 30, 2006
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A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick
“A deeply soulful novel that comprehends love and cruelty, and separates the big people from the small of heart, without ever losing sympathy for those unfortunates who don’t know how to live properly.” —Zadie Smith
One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston. Out of print for almost thirty years—due largely to initial audiences’ rejection of its strong black female protagonist—Hurston’s classic has since its 1978 reissue become perhaps the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature.
- Print length219 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Lexile measure890L
- Dimensions8.1 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
- PublisherAmistad
- Publication dateMay 30, 2006
- ISBN-100061120065
- ISBN-13978-0061120060
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From the Back Cover
One of the most important works of twentieth-century American literature, Zora Neale Hurston's beloved 1937 classic, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is an enduring Southern love story sparkling with wit, beauty, and heartfelt wisdom. Told in the captivating voice of a woman who refuses to live in sorrow, bitterness, fear, or foolish romantic dreams, it is the story of fair-skinned, fiercely independent Janie Crawford, and her evolving selfhood through three marriages and a life marked by poverty, trials, and purpose. A true literary wonder, Hurston's masterwork remains as relevant and affecting today as when it was first published—perhaps the most widely read and highly regarded novel in the entire canon of African American literature.
About the Author
Zora Neale Hurston was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist. She finished four novels (Jonah’s Gourd Vine, 1934; Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937; Moses, Man of the Mountains, 1939; and Seraph on the Suwanee, 1948) as well as The Life of Herod the Great, which she was still writing when she died; two books of folklore (Mules and Men, 1935, and Every Tongue Got to Confess, 2001); a work of anthropological research, (Tell My Horse, 1938); an autobiography (Dust Tracks on a Road, 1942); an international bestselling nonfiction work (Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo,” 2018); and over fifty short stories, essays, and plays. She attended Howard University, Barnard College, and Columbia University and was a graduate of Barnard College in 1928. She was born on January 7, 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama, and grew up in Eatonville, Florida.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Their Eyes Were Watching God
By Zora HurstonHarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright ©2006 Zora HurstonAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0061120065
Chapter One
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.
So the beginning of this was a woman and she had come back from burying the dead. Not the dead of sick and ailing with friends at the pillow and the feet. She had come back from the sodden and the bloated; the sudden dead, their eyes flung wide open in judgment.
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 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.
Seeing the woman as she was made them remember the envy they had stored up from other times. So they chewed up the back parts of their minds and swallowed with relish. They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty. A mood come alive, Words walking without masters; walking altogether like harmony in a song.
"What she doin coming back here in dem overhalls? Can't she find no dress to put on? -- Where's dat blue satin dress she left here in? -- Where all dat money her husband took and died and left her? -- What dat ole forty year ole 'oman doin' wid her hair swingin' down her back lak some young gal? Where she left dat young lad of a boy she went off here wid? -- Thought she was going to marry? -- Where he left her? -- What he done wid all her money? -- Betcha he off wid some gal so young she ain't even got no hairs -- why she don't stay in her class?"
When she got to where they were she turned her face on the bander log and spoke. They scrambled a noisy "good evenin'" and left their mouths setting open and their ears full of hope. Her speech was pleasant enough, but she kept walking straight on to her gate. The porch couldn't talk for looking.
The men noticed her firm buttocks like she had grape fruits in her hip pockets; the great rope of black hair swinging to her waist and unraveling in the wind like a plume; then her pugnacious breasts trying to b ore holes in her shirt. They, the men, were saving with the mind what they lost with the eye. The women took the faded shirt and muddy overalls and laid them away for remembrance. It was a weapon against her strength and if it turned out of no significance, still it was a hope that she might fall to their level some day.
But nobody moved, nobody spoke, nobody even thought to swallow spit until after her gate slammed behind her.
Pearl Stone opened her mouth and laughed real hard because she didn't know what else to do. She fell all over Mrs. Sumpkins while she laughed. Mrs. Sumpkins snorted violently and sucked her teeth.
"Humph! Y'all let her worry yuh. You ain't like me. Ah ain't got her to study 'bout. If she ain't got manners enough to stop and let folks know how she been malkin' out, let her g'wan! "
"She ain't even worth talkin' after," Lulu Moss drawled through her nose. "She sits high, but she looks low. Dat's what Ah say 'bout dese ole women runnin' after young boys."
Pheoby Watson hitched her rocking chair forward before she spoke. "Well, nobody don't know if it's anything to tell or not. Me, Ah'm her best friend, and Ah don't know."
"Maybe us don't know into things lak, you do, but we all know how she went 'way from here and us sho seen her come back. 'Tain't no use in your tryin' to cloak no ole woman lak Janie Starks, Pheoby, friend or no friend."
"At dat she ain't so ole as some of y'all dat's talking."
"She's way past forty to my knowledge, Pheoby."
"No more'n forty at de outside."
"She's 'way too old for a boy like Tea Cake."
"Tea Cake ain't been no boy for some time. He's round thirty his ownself."
"Don't keer what it was, she could stop and say a few words with us. She act like we done done something to her," Pearl Stone complained. "She de one been doin' wrong."
"You mean, you mad 'cause she didn't stop and tell us all her business; Anyhow, what you ever know her to do so bad as y'all make out? The worst thing Ah ever knowedher to do was taking a few years offa her age and dat ain't never harmed nobody. Y'all makes me tired. De way you talkin' you'd think de folks in dis town didn't do nothin' in de bed 'cept praise de Lawd. You have to 'scuse me, 'cause Ah'm bound to go take her some supper." Pheoby stood up sharply.
"Don't mind us," Lulu smiled, "just go right ahead, us can mind yo' house for you till you git back. Mah supper is done. You bettah go see how she feel. You kin let de rest of us know."
Continues...
Excerpted from Their Eyes Were Watching Godby Zora Hurston Copyright ©2006 by Zora Hurston. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- Publisher : Amistad; 75th Anniversary edition (May 30, 2006)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 219 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0061120065
- ISBN-13 : 978-0061120060
- Reading age : 16+ years, from customers
- Lexile measure : 890L
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #5,018 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #53 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #190 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- #632 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author
Zora Neale Hurston was born on Jan. 7, 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama. Hurston moved with her family to Eatonville, Florida, when she was still a toddler. Her writings reveal no recollection of her Alabama beginnings. For Hurston, Eatonville was always home.
Growing up in Eatonville, in an eight-room house on five acres of land, Zora had a relatively happy childhood, despite frequent clashes with her preacher-father. Her mother, on the other hand, urged young Zora and her seven siblings to "jump at de sun."
Hurston's idyllic childhood came to an abrupt end, though, when her mother died in 1904. Zora was only 13 years old.
After Lucy Hurston's death, Zora's father remarried quickly and seemed to have little time or money for his children. Zora worked a series of menial jobs over the ensuing years, struggled to finish her schooling, and eventually joined a Gilbert & Sullivan traveling troupe as a maid to the lead singer. In 1917, she turned up in Baltimore; by then, she was 26 years old and still hadn't finished high school. Needing to present herself as a teenager to qualify for free public schooling, she lopped 10 years off her life--giving her age as 16 and the year of her birth as 1901. Once gone, those years were never restored: From that moment forward, Hurston would always present herself as at least 10 years younger than she actually was.
Zora also had a fiery intellect, and an infectious sense of humor. Zora used these talents--and dozens more--to elbow her way into the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, befriending such luminaries as poet Langston Hughes and popular singer/actress Ethel Waters.
By 1935, Hurston--who'd graduated from Barnard College in 1928--had published several short stories and articles, as well as a novel (Jonah's Gourd Vine) and a well-received collection of black Southern folklore (Mules and Men). But the late 1930s and early '40s marked the real zenith of her career. She published her masterwork, Their Eyes Were Watching God, in 1937; Tell My Horse, her study of Caribbean Voodoo practices, in 1938; and another masterful novel, Moses, Man of the Mountain, in 1939. When her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, was published in 1942, Hurston finally received the well-earned acclaim that had long eluded her. That year, she was profiled in Who's Who in America, Current Biography and Twentieth Century Authors. She went on to publish another novel, Seraph on the Suwanee, in 1948.
Still, Hurston never received the financial rewards she deserved. So when she died on Jan. 28, 1960--at age 69, after suffering a stroke--her neighbors in Fort Pierce, Florida, had to take up a collection for her funeral. The collection didn't yield enough to pay for a headstone, however, so Hurston was buried in a grave that remained unmarked until 1973.
That summer, a young writer named Alice Walker traveled to Fort Pierce to place a marker on the grave of the author who had so inspired her own work.
Walker entered the snake-infested cemetery where Hurston's remains had been laid to rest. Wading through waist-high weeds, she soon stumbled upon a sunken rectangular patch of ground that she determined to be Hurston's grave. Walker chose a plain gray headstone. Borrowing from a Jean Toomer poem, she dressed the marker up with a fitting epitaph: "Zora Neale Hurston: A Genius of the South."
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I’m an avid reader but can count on the fingers of one hand the number of books I’ve read twice. This is one of them.
This book originally grabbed my attention because it was narrated by a strong female character. Janie is a fair-skinned African American woman who grew up in poverty with her traditional grandmother, Nanny. Stuck in the time before “equality” existed, Nanny wanted Janie to live a life of leisure, something she was unable to have. She married Janie off to Logan Killicks at a very young age. Janie then left Logan to venture to a new town with Joe Starks who offered her a grandiose and comfortable life, where she didn’t have to work and he could show her off. In a naive way, she believed that Joe loved her and wanted nothing but the best for her, however as he became more obsessed with his store and his town, she became more oppressed by his harsh words and head kerchiefs he forced her to wear. As Janie moves onto her third marriage to Tea Cake, she finally finds the relationship she is looking for. She knew “he could be a bee to a blossom--- a pear tree blossom in the spring.” This was something she dreamed of, having a relationship wear she could lay under a pear tree and simply be in love.
This book sends a powerful message about the importance of an equal relationship. Janie is oppressed by Logan and Joe, leaving her sad and lonely. When Tea Cake comes along and takes her to picnics, hunting or fishing, and teaches her to drive she realizes what she has been missing for years. He even chopped down a tree she didn’t like, along with “all those signs of possession” in Joe Stark’s house. Despite the strong relationship they have, Tea Cake still has control over Janie. He takes her money and goes off spending it without her permission, but she can’t say anything about it. This made me very angry. He also whips her when she talks to another man, though nothing was going on between them. He believes that “being able to whip her reassured him in possession.” She doesn’t let these things affect her because she loves Tea Cake and believes God is working in her life. When she comes to terms with this, she finally finds peace. At the end of the novel, when she is completely free of all relationships and ties to people, Janie is truly a happy woman. She is described pulling in “her horizon like a great fish-net” and “calling in her soul to come and see” the life in its meshes. At this moment her life is fulfilled.
This book hit all emotions. I was sad and felt empathy for Janie, I was happy, and I was angry beyond belief. Sometimes I laughed, while other times I wanted to tell one of the characters off. This story that Hurston created is so relatable that I felt aspects of Janie’s life in my own, even without the many years of experience she had. I truly believe that I could go back and read this book in a couple of years and learn a whole slew of new lessons.
SPOILER ALERT -
I like how the story unfolds. All the poor black people are finally done with work, so they sit on their porches and watch Janie as she comes home. Everybody gossips and wonders where she has been and what has happened to her. Her friend Pheoby goes to ask her, and Janie tells Pheoby all about what has happened in her life. She tells Pheoby about what Nanny said.
What happened was that when Nanny saw Janie kissing a boy, she (Nanny) decided to tell Janie that she always wanted to see Janie get married, instead of ending up like her (Nanny). She tells Janie that she (Nanny) was a slave, and that the overseer was the father of Janie's mom, and that the overseer's wife said she was going to see her (Nanny) punished for having a baby with her husband, the overseer. So one night Nanny and the baby (Janie's mom) escaped.
Eventually they were taken in by nice white people who helped put Janie's mom through school. Then Janie goes on to explain that one day her mom literally crawled back home to Nanny. It turns out she (Janie's mom) was molested by a schoolteacher, of all people. That's how Janie ended up coming into the world (she never meets the schoolteacher, who is her natural father. He's out of the story. He's just barely mentioned).
Anyway, Nanny said that she didn't want any of that sort of thing to happen to Janie. So Janie met Logan Killicks and married him. At first he was nice to her, but then he treated her like dirt, so she left him for another smooth-talking guy named Joe Starks, who was also called Jody.
Joe was very ambitious. He married Janie, then made himself become the mayor of the town, and of course, Janie became the mayor's wife. At first, Jody was nice to her, but then he was less and less kind and sweet as time went on. For example, he didn't let her wear her hair down. He scolded her about every little thing. They ran a grocery store, but he always told her she was doing everything wrong. Also, he didn't like to see her talking to anybody. He was very bossy and controlling.
After about 20 years, Janie became hardened and eventually told him off. She didn't hate him or anything, but she didn't let him mistreat her anymore, especially when she noticed that he was not as handsome as he used to be, and he had begun getting saggy and flabby and frail and weak. He soon died from poor health
After about eight or nine months, Janie was visited by another smooth-talker whose nickname was Tea Cake. They started hanging out together, and cooking fish and corn bread and eating together, and going hunting and fishing and to the movies. Eventually Janie and Tea Cake got married. Tea Cake wasn't a bad guy at all, although he was mainly good for only gambling (and winning), and growing beans. Growing beans is what he did when they moved to the Everglades in Florida.
Then there was a terrible hurricane. Tea Cake and Janie seemed to be watching the sky (but "their eyes were watching God", to see what God would do about the hurricane, and to see whether God would let them live).
While trying to escape the hurricane, Tea Cake got bitten by a dog when he was trying to prevent the dog from attacking Janie as she hung on to the tail of a cow in order to survive the hurricane floods. Eventually, Tea Cake ended up getting rabies (it wasn't specified in the book, but the symptoms of rabies were described---for example, Tea Cake could no longer tolerate water). When he lurched toward her with a gun in his hand, she had to end up shooting him dead.
She went to trial and was found innocent. After the trial, she picked herself up and went back home, and the story ends with her telling her friend Pheoby that this was the way things happened.
Top reviews from other countries
Written in beautiful poetic prose and dialect, the latter hard going but so vivid that the characters come to life.
The writing style does take some getting used to but I think Zora Neale Hurston’s style adds so much authenticity to the story! Definitely a book to consider reading!