Their Eyes Were Watching God

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Summary: Folk Culture +Love+ Feminism= Their Eyes Were Watching God
Review: Zora Neale Huston wrote an amazing book about a woman finding herself. In Teir Eyes Were Watching God, Janie follows her heart and we follow her through evrything. The amazing descriptions make you feel like you were there picking beans and running from a hurricane.We learn through Janie's eyes how the life of an African American woman was in the south and what she has to do to get what she wants.We learn about folk culture with the book's dialect which is easy to be understood. The book was beautifully written and everyone should go through the experience of reading it.

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Summary: Delicious!
Review: This story is incredible in its use of dialect, its domestic setting, its layers of women's knowledge vs. men's. It's essentially a love/quest story, with Janie learning about love in its many forms & disguises.... There are multiple layers of story telling here, too. There's a communal voice, and then there's Janie's voice.

What I love most about this story is that Hurston received so much criticism for writing a romance instead of a social commentary protest novel- but in a way, that is what the story is.... it's just that it's about women's lives as opposed to men's lives. There is protest & commentary in the way Janie is humbled, in the way she is treated as "the mule of the world" and the way when she finally finds love only to be lost again!

But still, Janie doesn't accept the disdain of the town, and in telling Phoeby her story and refusing to be ashamed, Janie is a true feminist, and this is a fabulous read.

Don't be thrown by the difficult dialect-- just go with it, and it will get easier after a few pages... you'll even probably learn to love the sound of it after a while. It's musical and "oral" and could help if you read it outloud to yourself some.

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Summary: a great read from start to end
Review: Although Hurston's writing was criticized by whites and blacks alike, what's amazing about this book is its ability to transcend the cultural biases and divisions of her time and touch the very heartstrings of humanity. A half a decade later and the pages are still turning. This is a magnificent book. It's is beautifully written (and believe me, it is), and is a great read. Even the title is creative.

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Summary: Watching Zora
Review: This is a book on black southern culture, by a black woman, in black dialect. It did not become well regarded until twenty to thirty years ago. For several decades it was derided by blacks, as being derogatory, and whites, as being trouble making. Here is an example of what I am talking about. In one of the later chapters, two black ladies discuss their being less black than darker "negroes." They are not "milatto" but have a "coffee-and-cream-complexion." One of them resents "negroes" because they are darker than she is. She regards herself as being closer to whites than they, and therefore better. In other words, the author is portraying a black woman as being racist to blacks. I had never been aware of this problem before. Obviously the black community took offence to this, as did the white community. Both of them in the wrong, of course.

The imagery is worth taking a look at: "Be careful with me, I am a cracked plate." The protagonist Janie is too. She marries the wrong guys, each of whom exert their power on her. Her naivete is her fatal flaw, as you will see.

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Summary: One woman's road to self-realization
Review: "Their Eyes Were Watching God" is a powerful portrayal of the personal growth of a black woman in Florida in the early part of the twentieth century. Specifically, it is concerned with her arrival at a certain state of self-awareness and self-reliance as a result of her relationships with her three husbands.

The protagonist, Janie Crawford, was raised by her grandmother, whose memories of slavery and poverty inspire her principal desire for her granddaughter to marry well and become a respectable lady. She compels Janie to marry a dull and much older man named Logan Killicks. Salvation is close at hand, however; one day Janie meets an attractive young man named Jody Starks and soon runs away with him to get married, despite not having divorced Killicks.

Jody is ambitious and motivated; he wants to be a "big voice." He takes Janie to a new, ungoverned "black" town called Eatonville, quickly takes charge of building and improving it, and becomes the mayor almost by default. He runs the store and post office and forces Janie to work for him, constantly treating her with condescension, humiliation, and possessiveness, for which she occasionally retaliates in kind. He assumes that her status as the mayor's wife is sufficient to keep her happy, when what she really wants is her own voice and not to have to live in his shadow all the time. When he eventually dies of kidney failure, she rejoices in her emancipation rather than mourns.

Soon Janie meets Tea Cake, who is quite a bit younger than her and more easygoing, fun-loving, and reckless than Jody. They get married and move to a farming village down in the Everglades, where Janie gets the opportunity to socialize more openly with the common folks than she did when she was Mrs. Starks. Janie and Tea Cake's marriage ends in a very ironic way that I will not reveal, but it is this climactic event which transforms Janie into the woman we presume she will be for the rest of her life.

Race relations between whites and blacks are not a major focus of this novel. There is acknowledgement of the effects of segregation in the complexion-obsessed Mrs. Turner, who thinks the black race should be "lightened" so as to be more acceptable to white people; and after the harrowing hurricane scene, it is revealed that white corpses take precedence over black corpses in the receipt of coffins. For the most part, however, the novel is concerned with the everyday relationships among its black characters and the slang and pronunciational nuances that characterize their interaction.

At the time of its publication, this novel was criticized by some black writers for not being sufficiently angry or socially or politically active, but it doesn't need to be. It is a bold, assertive novel about a woman who learns to affirm her sense of self-worth, and that is as sufficient a statement as can be expected of literature.

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Summary: Review by Lorilee Robinson
Review: If you read only one book this year, let it be _Their Eyes Were Watching God_. It is one of the only books I've read that I have truly and completely enjoyed. Your interest will be maintained throughout the entire book in this compelling story about the main character, Janie.

Janie's story takes place in the South just after the turn of the 20th century, and Hurston gives powerful descriptions of the race and gender relations of that era. Janie is racially mixed, and the book explores how she is consequently barred from the white world but excluded in many ways from the black world.

At the beginning of her story, Janie remarks, "Ah know exactly what Ah got to tell yuh, but it's hard to know where to start at." Hurston's charming use of dialect serves to enrich the reader's understanding of the character's culture and adds to the novel's atmosphere.

Hurston paints us a world rich with imagery and symbolism of nature, love, and life. You will not be able to resist Hurston's exquisite accounts of the world, as when she writes, "Oh to be a pear tree -_any_ tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world! [Janie] was sixteen. She had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her."

The most compelling aspect of the novel is the personal journey that Janie goes through. The reader will follow Janie as she embarks on her search for love, with all its disappointments and fulfillments. Janie's experiences teach her about herself and what she wants in life. Through this self-realization, she secures her identity and reaches empowerment. This book will make you cry, it will make you laugh, it will enrage you, but most importantly it will make you _think_.

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Summary: "blacklove?!"
Review: On the back cover of my edition of the book, there is a quote that refers to the novel as "the most exemplary novel of Blacklove that we have." At first, I hadn't the slightest idea what this meant; the actually struck me as being kind of funny. After reading it though, the meaning started to become clear. Hurston's characters in this book are portrayed as people, rather than just black people. Hurston shows their disagreements, loves, and wishes as belonging to real people, that exist in their own right, rather than as an oppressed underclass, or a contrast to the white world. Racial struggle is, in fact, rarely mentioned in the book. After I read this, I started on Native Son, and in the first five pages I saw more references to oppression and inequality and so forth than in Huston's entire book. With some minor story changes, and a change of the dialect, the story could be about any group of people, as the plot does not depend on everyone's emotions being entirely fixed on the one idea of a racially unjust society.
Hurston's other achievement here, I think, in addition to the universal feling of the story, the contrast of two rich voices. The blend of the "pure" English of the narration and the black dialect voice of the characters comes out stronger than if either had been used exclusively.
I was supposed to read this book for English class last year, but didn't get very far into it. I picked it up again later though, and I'm glad I did.

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Summary: There are not enough stars......
Review: There are not enough stars to give this book... period. I have often wished that Spike Lee would choose this book to do a movie on. I don't know how he would get the Okee Fanokee(hope spelling is right)swamp to rise like it did in the book, and perhaps he could never do the story justice, but it should be brought to the screen. Vanessa Williams is just right for the lead, and once I would have cast Wesley Snipes as Tea Cake, but now I might cast Will Smith. This book will affirm your life, it is wonderful. A must read on any list.

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Summary: Black folk literature - with a dash of feminism!
Review: In "Their Eyes," Hurston uses simple words to paint a stunning setting and story in the South, all from the eyes of a woman. This novel provides something that I've never quite tasted before in black literature: feminism. It's subtle, albeit, even hidden, but it's there. The main character, Janie, initially seems to contradict all typical ideas of independence and strength as our heroine, but by the end of the novel, we feel a comanding sense of sisterhood with her...and begin to understand all the dynamics of her life. The author's use of slang and written dialect gives the story flare - you may find that you're mumbling to yourself in the same manner as the characters! I can't even begin to go into all of the reasons why this book is a "MUST READ" for anyone...it's unique, emotionally gripping, and you won't be able to put it down. In fact, you'll finish it in a couple of days! Take my word for it, as my opinion of this author and her novels is humbly accompanied by many famous authors of our time: enjoy this story that Miss Zora has spun for us!

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Summary: Their Eyes Were Watching God
Review: Zora Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God is an amazing heartfelt novel about a young black women attempting to find her herself growing up in the Deep South. Hurston. The novel follows the life of Janie from a young girl to an elderly woman as she follows path after path down a journey of self-discovery. Each man that she marries seems to offer a new direction on the path and yet most do not offer the complete sense of fulfillment for which she seeks. Hurston seems to be able bring this out of the reader and allow them to contemplate their own sense of fulfillment in life.
Yet the language of the novel is very difficult to read at times, I found that it only added to the feel of the story. It brings the story alive and throws you into the world in which the characters are living. It feels as though you know and understand Janie and can truly relate to the characters in the story.
It was an amazing piece of literature that I truly enjoyed.