#AmReading – Their Eyes Were Watching God

A Classic Lost and Then Recovered

My goal this year was to expand the diversity of my reading. While my reading list has included female authors and authors of color, it has been dominated by white men. This is the last book of that effort for 2020. I’ll talk about what I’ve learned in my end of the year summary.

For the moment, I get to focus on this amazing book. Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937 novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God” Is a moving portrayal of a young black woman trying to find a place that fits her, rather than the roles forced on her. Her grandmother has expectations about who Janie Crawford is and what she should accept as a life. Janie is a bright girl who is no more willful than any teenager, but Nanny projects the pain of her own life and that of her daughter, Janie’s mother, into the girl’s future. Janie’s first husband, an arranged marriage, wants a farm worker and housekeeper more than a wife. When Janie leaves him, she falls for the handsome and charismatic Joe Starks who can give her the finer things in life. But for Joe, Janie is a beautiful trophy for display to all around him. He has no more interest in her mind or who she is than her first husband. Eventually, Janie ends up with a much younger lover. Tea Cake has a bit of wildness to him, but he sees Janie in a way no one else does. In that relationship, she finds love, respect, work, and tragedy.

It is in the growth of Janie’s understanding of who she is and what she deserves that the novel soars. By the end, Janie makes no apologies for who she is and has no interest in what other folks think of her. Thurston carries the story forward without resorting to grand epiphanies. Each relationship, be they intimate or communal, wears away some of the social expectations from Janie’s vision. Until she has a lens that gives her a clear vision of her world and what she wants.

Thurston writes the story, most especially the dialogue, in the language of poor African-Americans from the first part of the 20th Century. I will admit that I struggled with it until I learned to listen for the sound of the words and the sense of the sentences. It flowed much better when I stopped laying my expectations (language based) on the story. Despite the challenges I had, I could not walk away from Janie’s story.

“They Kept Their Eyes On God” was a critical success among white critics, less so with the contemporary Black critical community. It was not a best seller in its day and faded to obscurity in the 25 years after its first printing. As academia expanded Black Studies programs in the 1960s and ’70s, Thurston’s work re-surfaced. Today that work, and this book especially, holds a place of great respect. The quality of the storytelling and the strong writing style show every reason for that rating.

Rating – ***** Recommended