Brilliance, Genius, Defiance & Timelessness: Zora Neale Hurston

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. 1st HarperCollins hardcover ed., HarperCollins, 2000.

"I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality, rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions." -Zora Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Were Watching God is a work of art that had all but faded from memory, much like the fascinating woman who wrote it, Zora Neale Hurston. She is reported to have written in Haiti in just seven weeks; only an academic, observant, courageous and emotionally intelligent woman could do this. I imagine a seven-week fever induced by genius and the feel of the tropics where she, herself, was spinning a shawl made of "sun stuff" as the breeze cooled her skin. I visualize this strong black woman, packaging her gift in the ink pressed onto paper because nothing else could contain it.

It was 1937 and she was snubbed for her audacity to be a brilliant black woman!

Zora Neale Hurston

Decades later, thanks to acclaimed author, Alice Walker (The Color Purple), the world was reintroduced to Ms. Hurston’s art and intellect. Her works were resurrected by Ms. Walker in 1975. Shunned by men, it makes sense it would take a woman to bring her work into glory.

I had neither read any of Hurston’s works nor was I familiar with any of her backstory. Zora Neale Hurston went up against contemporaries, such as the likes for W.E.B. DuBois, for the variation of English that was prominent in the narrative as she heard it. She put down the truth based on the reality of the language to which she was accustomed as a black woman in the south. I imagine that, as an anthropologist, she was precisely aware she was crafting her book in a style that might not be embraced by her peers. The black minds of academia thought the language variation to be beneath the image they were asserting of a black person. Therefore, her work was, in fact, not celebrated, in part, for exactly that reason - the speech she succinctly captured.

Zora Neale Hurston

Because Ms. Hurston received little to no accolades for this masterpiece that faded away, Ms. Walker's importance cannot be overstated!

Alice Walker

In today's age, Their Eyes Were Watching God should be regarded as a gift ping-ponged through a portal in history. If you are as unfamiliar as I was, I hope to enlighten you; perhaps enough to read it for yourself! This will not, however, be an academic report, or even a full “book report”, per se. I aim to simply give perspective and shed light to some themes.

Let's start with the bottom line: Yes! Read it! By the way, affiliate links hook me up with a little sliver of the pie; should you wish to support my work with a little drop in the bucket, please do! Thank you so much! 🎂

"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."  - Janie Crawford

Janie Crawford is a young girl in the Jim Crow era who entered the world as a byproduct of consecutive rapes – of a black woman by a white man – going back at least three generations into slavery. She was born into trauma but admired and envied for being "light skinned" and having "good" hair. She was raised by her grandmother, a nanny to white children, because her mother spiraled away into a grief-stricken rage not fit for a baby’s survival. “Nanny”, as everyone called her, raised Janie with a sharp hand and, with her, intended to impose the discipline that might market Janie as proper. Most of all, she ruled to land the Janie an esteemed man before the curse of another rape could impregnate her, too.

Nanny’s sole vision was for Janie to be afforded a position holding court on the porch of her own home, not serving the affluent with neither back breaking nor demeaning work. Nanny wanted a better life for Janie but with generational traumas that imposed her own fears, including lack of control, she was remiss in how to create the foundation she aimed to provide. Over the decades, Janie would give much thought to whether intention is a consolation for restraint in happiness.

Janie’s coming of age first kiss, which took place across a fence, was noticed by Nanny’s ever-watching eye. Ironically, this is all it took for her childhood to end and the backlash of misapproximated boundaries began. Nanny forced Janie into an arranged marriage that she felt would grant her girl the best chance for a future with position and security. Janie needed the steadiness by way of an already established mate. At sixteen she was promised, over wet tears on the shoulders of women, that she would come to love the much older man who was more a father figure than proper husband. Instead, her heart felt increasingly trapped and lonely as her mind’s eye courted a teenage girl’s flirtation with romance.  

That is the backstory of Ms. Janie Crawford. The arch of her character follows her open and aching heart as she tries to understand the enigma of all times, what it means to love and be loved. The turbulence of her upbringing planted ideas in her soul that she struggled to manifest and defend. The question of romantic love and in what space of a person is it healthy for it to reside is explored and, subsequently, so are boundaries. Parental love is implicitly addressed by its absence. Familial love is stretched in overbearance. The love found in friendships, lost in envy and the exploitations of trust and dissolutions as a binder to love are forever in her forethought, the horizons of Ms. Janie.

Discovering the obscurity of self-love is challenging, particularly for people who are conditioned to seek outward validation. Its importance is often overlooked. Janie was no exception; coming into her own power as only a 40ish woman who fights for her spirit only to be repetitiously tossed around and emotionally manipulated at the end of a long road through the mire can is a worthy and timeless metanarrative for women - especially black women - and, to a degree albeit slight, any marginalized peoples.

Given the historical context of the depression era south and being a town built and run by the black community it attracted, the characters – and especially Janie – are rich with life. So much so that I, as a white woman nearly a decade later, can see parts of myself reflected in Janie. I am interested to know how many others can seem themselves in her, too. Other characters?

There are so many angles to view this work, which is such a beautiful part of literature - being invested enough to care but removed enough to consider and learn from other points of view! The feminine divine vs. Male toxicity. Inter and intra discriminations. Poor versus rich and the qualities of their lives. And self-love as a condition versus a misguided journey towards hope. These the lenses through which I keep "seeing" Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Several days after finishing this book, all these notions linger in my quieted mind, and the ambiguous prose poetry closing the narration haunts my thoughts.

I see you, Janie.  

Ms. Walker, thank you.  

Ms. Hurston, I am fascinated by your genius and “audacity”.

Dear reader, I love to know your thoughts! Any of these facets of Their Eyes Were Watching God or any other insights you'd like to share! 👇 Get your copy here!

By the way, affiliate links hook me up with a little sliver of the pie, should you wish to support my work with a little drop in the bucket please do! Thank you so much! 🎂

Updated with content on Sunday 04/03/2022

Original post: This weekend's blog is delayed going live due to a family emergency. Please stay tuned as this post will be updated before the weekend's end. Thank you!