More than anything, this is a book about authorship. How do we define who is an author or the author of a book? In this book, we have a contemporary editor, a collection of different other writers writing forewords and afterwords, we have Hurston acting in capacity as ethnographer, and we have Cudjo Lewis himself telling his story. But all these different voices have a varying impact on the final artifact of the book itself. What is the book here? Is it the text of Lewis […]
Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) by Zora Neale Hurston is a relatively short classic that I read because it was on my Fifty Books Every Woman Should Read Before She Turns 40 List. The introduction stated that the book is a classic because of its unique contribution to black literature: “it affirms black cultural traditions while revising them to empower black women.” I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect, and was afraid it was one of those classics that feels dated or is difficult to read and […]
Happy Birthday, Zora Neale Hurston!
Thanks to Bonnie for sending me this book for the Cannonball holiday book exchange! Their Eyes Were Watching God is a love story and an odyssey. It is a feminist story about a woman named Janie who struggles to live the life that she desires, to fulfill her own dreams instead of being trapped in others’ dreams. In telling this story Zora Neale Hurston employed a language new to African American literature — the vernacular, the genuine language of African American communities, particularly of women. […]
Love Like The Sea
I read this novel for my Black Women as Writers course and immediately fell in love. Their Eyes Were Watching God is simultaneously poetic and harshly realistic as Janie grows and learns of the nature of relationships and what it means to love another. I recommend it for everyone, but especially those who catch themselves wondering about that elusive “true love” or those trying to learn how to love themselves. Read the full review here.