Discount Shopping Online :: Books Their Eyes Were Watching God : :

Their Eyes Were Watching God
by: Zora Neale Hurston

List Price: $15.95

Amazon.com's Price: $10.85

You Save: $5.10 (32%)
Prices subject to change.

Used Price: $5.87
Collectible Price: $7.95
Third Party New Price: $7.75

Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780061120060
ISBN: 0061120065
Label: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: June 01, 2006
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Release Date: May 30, 2006
Sales Rank: 368
Studio: Harper Perennial Modern Classics

Related Items:

Editorial Review:

Product Description:

One of the most important works of twentieth-century American literature, Zora Neale Hurston's beloved 1937 classic, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is an enduring Southern love story sparkling with wit, beauty, and heartfelt wisdom. Told in the captivating voice of a woman who refuses to live in sorrow, bitterness, fear, or foolish romantic dreams, it is the story of fair-skinned, fiercely independent Janie Crawford, and her evolving selfhood through three marriages and a life marked by poverty, trials, and purpose. A true literary wonder, Hurston's masterwork remains as relevant and affecting today as when it was first published -- perhaps the most widely read and highly regarded novel in the entire canon of African American literature.

Amazon.com Review:
At the height of the Harlem Renaissance during the 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston was the preeminent black woman writer in the United States. She was a sometime-collaborator with Langston Hughes and a fierce rival of Richard Wright. Her stories appeared in major magazines, she consulted on Hollywood screenplays, and she penned four novels, an autobiography, countless essays, and two books on black mythology. Yet by the late 1950s, Hurston was living in obscurity, working as a maid in a Florida hotel. She died in 1960 in a Welfare home, was buried in an unmarked grave, and quickly faded from literary consciousness until 1975 when Alice Walker almost single-handedly revived interest in her work.

Of Hurston's fiction, Their Eyes Were Watching God is arguably the best-known and perhaps the most controversial. The novel follows the fortunes of Janie Crawford, a woman living in the black town of Eaton, Florida. Hurston sets up her characters and her locale in the first chapter, which, along with the last, acts as a framing device for the story of Janie's life. Unlike Wright and Ralph Ellison, Hurston does not write explicitly about black people in the context of a white world--a fact that earned her scathing criticism from the social realists--but she doesn't ignore the impact of black-white relations either:

It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road. It was the time to hear things and talk. These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins. But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgment.

One person the citizens of Eaton are inclined to judge is Janie Crawford, who has married three men and been tried for the murder of one of them. Janie feels no compulsion to justify herself to the town, but she does explain herself to her friend, Phoeby, with the implicit understanding that Phoeby can 'tell 'em what Ah say if you wants to. Dat's just de same as me 'cause mah tongue is in mah friend's mouf.'

Hurston's use of dialect enraged other African American writers such as Wright, who accused her of pandering to white readers by giving them the black stereotypes they expected. Decades later, however, outrage has been replaced by admiration for her depictions of black life, and especially the lives of black women. In Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston breathes humanity into both her men and women, and allows them to speak in their own voices. --Alix Wilber

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Great choice for my city's BIG READ participation!
On the basis of a news story about Zora Neale Hurston, I bought Their Eyes Were Watching God before learning at a preview of Harlem Renaissance art that Bakersfield had chosen this novel for 2009's Big Read.

Once I adapted to Hurston's vernacular, the story moved swiftly and most compellingly during the hurricane episode.

Prior to this I had no idea of how influential Hurston was on subsequent generations of black writers. For this reason among many, I'm recommending it to others.

Rating:

- World class fiction, quick
The only speedbump in this maddeningly addictive read is Hurston's rendering of dialect, spelled just as it's pronounced. Once you acclimate, and once you know that her writing was based on her astounding academic work as a folklorist and anthropologist, it only takes a few pages before you realize that you're in the hands of a master. The hundreds of people who have taken the time to review this book testify to its impact--once you're done with it, it evokes a compulsion to share the experience.

The brilliance of the book is only enhanced by its brevity. You can easily read it in a sitting, although you'll find yourself lingering on some of the pages as you turn over the expressiveness and beautiful language phrase by phrase. So many reviewers have summed up the story's plot, I'll leave that description to a single line: beautiful love story, crafted by genius.

"Their Eyes Were Watching ... Read More

Rating:

- A Beautiful Piece of Literature
I've never read anything so beautiful. The characters were so rich and the story was just perfect. Janie, the main character, was everything a woman is supposed to be, beautiful, confident, strong and capable. I felt like I was there, I felt their pain and happiness. The way she described things not only made you feel as if you were there but it was written in this way that is so beautiful that even if she were describing a rotting carcas it would still sound like a delicate little flower. I would recomend this book to anyone. Even the coldest person could cry if they read this.

Rating:

- Southern Florida in the early 20th century and one black woman's story
This 1937 novel has become a classic of its time. It is a mere 184 pages long, but the edition of the book I read is packed by commentary. I skipped this commentary because I wasn't particularly interested in literary or social analysis. I just wanted to experience the book for itself and the story it told. Reading it this way, I actually "felt" the book in the way the author intended. And, "wow", I really understand why it has stood the test of time.

Set in her native Florida, we first meet Janie Crawford, a black woman in her 40s, when she returns to the town of Eatonville. She's been gone for a few years because she left town with a younger man named Tea Cake, who she married after she was widowed. As she tells her woman-friend her story, the reader is cast into her world.

Born the granddaughter of a slave, she was married young to a farmer who wanted more of a farm worker than a ... Read More

Discount Shopping Online Books and Publications

Books : Their Eyes Were Watching God
Books and Publications Average Rating:

Search the web for info about Their Eyes Were Watching God

Discount Shopping Online Books and Publications

Books : Their Eyes Were Watching GodBooks and Publications Average Rating:

Search the web for info about Their Eyes Were Watching God

Books : Their Eyes Were Watching God
Books and Publications Average Rating: