seebrandyread 's review for:

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

4.5

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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Zora Neale Hurston wasn’t always a canonical writer; she was criticized by many of her contemporaries until Alice Walker led her resurgence back into the mainstream. For better or worse, Hurston’s voice is vital to Black, American, and feminist literature for her mastery of voice, lyricism, and, most of all, humanity. There’s nearly as much dialogue as exposition in Their Eyes Were Watching God which fits with Hurston’s other career as a playwright. And while I often feel frustrated when writers fill novels with dialogue rather than write a play, this dialogue needs to be read as much as spoken. Some have debated over whether Janie is a “feminist” character and whether Hurston was a “feminist” writer. In her foreword to this edition, Edwidge Danticat comes to the conclusion that Janie need only “be a fully realized and complex character,” not an ideal role model. The product of the rape of a Black woman by a white man, Janie has an understandably complicated relationship to whiteness. Though her story is ultimately about coming into her own and finding independence later in life, that story is still very much intertwined with the men she becomes tied to. But most importantly, Janie learns how to tell her story. She finds not only her voice but also the understanding that she can share it how, when, and with whom she chooses.