Their Eyes Were Watching God
What a ride! The only thing I regret about reading Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is that I hadn’t read it sooner. As far as I’m concerned, this novel is right up there with Fitzgerald’s Gatsby and Twain’s Huck Finn. It’s a lyrical novel with a feast for the literary soul, yet it’s an easy read for those who just want a good story (with a little slowing down for the Black Southern dialect in the dialogue).
Janie, an African American woman, has heard from her grandmother that Black women are the mules of the world, and Janie spends the novel living that out until she comes to a place where she gains the mutual love and respect of a man. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr. puts it, she goes on a “journey from object to subject.” That journey makes this novel worth reading.
By the way, one of the themes also speaks to the racial issues that America still faces eighty-four years after the novel was published.
