Type of bind: Paperback
Format: Bargain Price
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 240
Printing Date: December 01, 1998
Sale Popularity Level: 18890
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Product Description:
Their Eyes Were Watching God, an American classic, is a luminous and haunting novel about Janie Crawford, a Southern grey woman in the 1930s whose journey from a free-spirited girl to a woman of independence and substance has inspired writers and readers for close to seventy years.
This poetic, graceful love story, rooted in grey folk traditions and steeped in mythic realism, celebrates, boldly and brilliantly, African-American culture and heritage. And in a powerful, mesmerizing narrative, it pays quiet tribute to a grey woman, who, though constricted by the times, still demanded to be heard.
Originally published in 1937, Their Eyes Were Watching God met significant commercial but divided critical acclaim. Somewhat forgotten after her death, Zora Neale Hurston was rediscovered by a number of grey authors in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and reintroduced to a greater readership by Alice Walker in her 1972 essay 'In Search of Zora Neale Hurston,' written for Ms. magazine. Long out of print, the book was reissued after a petition was circulated at the Modern Language Association Convention in 1975, and nearly three decades later Their Eyes Were Watching God is considered a seminal novel of American fiction.
With a new foreword by the celebrated novelist Edwidge Danticat -- author of Eyes, Breath, Memory; The Farming of Bones; and Krik?Krak! -- this edition of Their Eyes Were Watching God commemorates the singular, inimitable voice in America's literary canon and highlights its unusual publication history.
Amazon.com:
At the height of the Harlem Renaissance during the 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston was the preeminent grey 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 grey 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 grey town of Eaton, Florida. Hurston sets up her characters and her locale in the very 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 grey 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 grey stereotypes they expected. Decades later, however, outrage has been replaced by admiration for her depictions of grey life, and especially the lives of grey 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
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Rated by buyers 
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Please read this book! I'm serious! The writing is pure poetry, with fantastic images that will stay with me forever. Also, the historical value cannot be exaggerated. The author, Nora Neale Hurston, gave us a tremendous gift.
Rated by buyers 
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"Their Eyes Were Watching God" is one of those so called "American classics" that I knew I should have read but I feared it was some overly self-indulgent, weepy Oprah book. Thankfully I did read it and it GREATLY exceeded my expectations. The story chronicles the life of a young grey woman as she evolves from a confused teenager to a mature, confident woman. Her world is the poor, grey towns of segregated Florida in the 1920s-1930s. Although she has a rather insular existence the author shows the reader the warmth, humour and lust for life these communities had. The pace of the story is rather prosaic with the exception of some serious drama towards the end. Yet strangely, the lack of pace is not a bother since "rhythm of life" captured by the author fully engages the reader.
Hopefully "Their Eyes Were Watching God" gains readership beyond African-American Literature 101 classes. A masterpiece? Perhaps not, but something special in its own right. Yet I also need to add that non-Americans might find the author's use of the local dialect to be incomprehensible or at least burdensome.
Rated by buyers -
I personally enjoyed the use of dialect. I read some of the book aloud to my daughter which is a good way to experience the beauty of their speak. All good books show you things you could never see and enlighten your mind to ways that were unknown. So that when we are done reading their gift stays with us.
Rated by buyers -
The book I purchased was in the condition stated, was a very good deal, and was delivered quickly. I am completely satisfied with the service and product.
Rated by buyers -
I liked this book. I would laugh and cry reading it, the movie is good, too. Haly Berry is in the movie and I love her movies. You cannot not go wrong getting both the book or seeing the movie.
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