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Their Eyes Were Watching God

by Zora Neale Hurston
Their Eyes Were Watching God

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  • Synopses & Reviews

ISBN13: 9780060931414
ISBN10: 0060931418
Condition: Standard


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From Powells.com

Black History Month

Staff recommendations, guest essays, and curated reading lists.


Staff Pick

This book changed my life and the way I read fiction. The folk dialect narrative brought me further inside a main character’s mind than I’d ever gone before, until I found myself seeing through Janie’s eyes and experiencing her losses and heartache as my own. If identifying with a black woman’s voice and struggle is considered dangerous enough to merit book banning, the act of reading this richly significant novel is an act of societal rebellion. Recommended By Aubrey W., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person -- no mean feat for a black woman in the '30s. Janie's quest for identity takes her through three marriages and into a journey back to her roots.

Review

"There is no book more important than this one." Alice Walker

About the Author

In her award-winning autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), Zora Neale Hurston claimed to have been born in Eatonville, Florida, in 1901. She was, in fact, born in Notasulga, Alabama, on January 7, 1891, the fifth child of John Hurston (farmer, carpenter, and Baptist preacher) and Lucy Ann Potts (school teacher). The author of numerous books, including Their Eyes Were Watching God, Jonah's Gourd Vine, Mule sand Men, and Moses, Man of the Mountain, Hurston had achieved fame and sparked controversy as a novelist, anthropologist, outspoken essayist, lecturer, and theatrical producer during her sixty-nine years. Hurston's finest work of fiction appeared at a time when artistic and political statements -- whether single sentences or book-length fictions -- were peculiarly conflated. Many works of fiction were informed by purely political motives; political pronouncements frequently appeared in polished literary prose. Hurston's own political statements, relating to racial issues or addressing national politics, did not ingratiate her with her black male contemporaries. The end result was that Their Eyes Were Watching God went out of print not long after its first appearance and remained out of print for nearly thirty years.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has been one among many to ask: "How could the recipient of two Guggenheims and the author of four novels, a dozen short stories, two musicals, two books on black mythology, dozens of essays, and a prize winning autobiography virtually 'disappear' from her readership for three full decades?"

That question remains unanswered. The fact remains that every one of Hurston's books went quickly out of print; and it was only through the determined efforts, in the 1970s, of Alice Walker, Robert Hemenway (Hurston's biographer), Toni Cade Bambara, and other writers and scholars that all of her books are now back in print and that she has taken her rightful place in the pantheon of American authors.

In 1973, Walker, distressed that Hurston's writings had been all but forgotten, found Hurston's grave in the Garden of Heavenly Rest and installed a gravemarker. "After loving and teaching her work for a number of years," Walker later reported, "I could not bear that she did not have a known grave." The gravemarker now bears the words that Walker had inscribed there:

ZORA NEALE HURSTON

GENIUS OF THE SOUTH

NOVELIST FOLKLORIST ANTHROPOLOGIST

(1891-1960)

In Brief

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist whose fictional and factual accounts of black heritage are unparalleled. She Is the author of many books, including Their Eyes Were Watching God, Dust Tracks on a Road, Tell My Horse, and Mules and Men.


5 3

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 5 (3 comments)

`
britt_luvs_cheveys , November 05, 2007
I agree on the fact that the book itself is very inspiring. The book is about a woman stuggling for love and independance.

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`
Lucy Little , August 22, 2007 (view all comments by Lucy Little)
This well-written gem is an American classic. Hurston's tale of an African-American woman in the South is both educational and inspiring. I first read this as a college student in a women's lit class, but didn't fully appreciate it until I reread it as an adult (I guess I was supposed to be an adult in college.). She brings to life the era and the struggles faced. This book has stood the test of time; it has a permanent spot on my bookshelf.

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`
icarus_wings , January 21, 2007
Zora Neale Hurston brings an entirely new perspective to the canon of African-American and women's literature. As a tale of love, a search for identity, and a struggle for individualism, Their Eyes Were Watching God is a true masterpiece.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780060931414
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
02/01/1990
Publisher:
HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS
Series info:
Classics on cassette with book
Pages:
240
Height:
8.14 in.
Width:
5.26 in.
Thickness:
.59 in.
Number of Units:
1
Copyright Year:
1990
Series Volume:
107-51
UPC Code:
2800060931416
Author:
Zora Neale Hurston
Afterword:
Henry Louis Gates
Afterword:
Henry Louis, Jr. Gates
Author:
Henry Louis, Jr. Gates
Author:
Henry Louis, Jr. JR. Gates
Foreword:
Mary Helen Washington
Author:
Zora Neals Hurston
Subject:
Self-realization
Subject:
African Americans
Subject:
Psychological fiction
Subject:
Afro-American women
Subject:
Self-realization -- Fiction.
Subject:
American fiction (fictional works by one author)
Subject:
Epic literature
Subject:
Fiction
Subject:
African-American women
Subject:
Florida

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List Price:$13.95
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10Burnside
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1Hawthorne
8Local Warehouse

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