This book sucked. Richard Wright was correct when he stated that Zora Neale Hurston pandered to white prejudiced readers. The way Hurston's black characters speak in this book portrays African Americans as stupid, easily fooled, and naive. The story was boring, pointless, and poorly written. The book, in short, was unbelievably bad, and if it weren't for I school assignment, I wouldn't have wasted time and money reading this bilge.

There's a good chance you're buying this book because it's assigned reading for a class. Go into that classroom and THANK YOUR TEACHER. I didn't read this book in school. I stumbled upon when I was done with school. I bought it because I thought the title was interesting. What I found inside this book stunned me. The voice is so strong you can feel it in your heart. The writing is beautiful. The story will shake you. Enjoy!

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.

"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 black woman as she evolves from a confused teenager to a mature, confident woman. Her world is the poor, black towns of segregated Florida in the 1920s-1930s. Although she has a rather insular existence the author shows the reader the warmth, humor 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.

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.

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.

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.

This book is an incredible story of a mulatto woman's amazing journey through life and the journey to discover who she is. Touching and well written, this story is a great read for literary folks interested in modernism.

This book arrived right on time. It was in excellent condition. I really enjoyed the story.

Zora Neale Hurston will probably be remembered best as the author of this novel. She writes in dialogue or dialect in the South especially to help establish the realism and relationships between the characters. This book is about Janie Crawford, the granddaughter of Nanny Crawford (who was a former slave who had a child with her white master known as Leafy). Nanny wisely leaves the plantation with her baby. She raises Leafy who gets raped by her teacher and gives birth to Janie. Leafy abandons her baby daughter in the care of her grandmother who raised her with other children. It wasn't until 6 that Janie realized that she was different from the children that her grandmother cared for. Janie realized that she was black or African American. Until then, she was just one of the kids. As an adult, she yearns for love from a man. She is married off to an old farmer, Logan Killicks. She leaves him for Joe Stark and finally there was Teacake Magee, the love of her life. This book is a classic. In order to teach it, I would recommend the movie with Halle Berry and the audio version with Ruby Dee who also played Nanny in the television film version. The audio helps bring alive the rich dialect that Zora recreated to help establish the realism of life in the South during the 1930s and Great Depression.

In this charming tale of one woman's experience with love set in small closely knit African American Southern communities we are introduced to the life and culture of American blacks in the 1930's. The author who is also an anthropologist tells the tale in the heavy black dialect that was so prevelent in small rural southern towns. The author's technique in using the vernacular created a rich atmosphere and back drop for Janie's experiences with love and spiritual growth. I gave the book 4 stars, because understanding the dialect was challenging for me. A reader more familiar with the dialect would have an easier time with the story. However, interspersed with the dialect came crisp clear and charming images narrated in the author's own articulate voice. Some of the images are simply charming. One example is the following: "The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor. It was there to shake hands whenever company came to visit, but it never went inside the bedroom again." (pg.71) "She took careful stock of herself,then combed her hair and tied it back up again. Then she starched and ironed her face, forming it into just what people wanted to see."

In the end Janie has triumphantly broadened her horizens and possibilites. This has brought her peace.

In the story, the title is used as a phrase when the hurricane occurs. I believe that the God whom Janie and Tea Cake watch stands as a compassionate God who encourages them to discover both the painful and joyous aspects of love, both of which can lead to self-discovery, forgiveness and redemption. In my perception, this God has such a capacity for love and magnanimity that it defies gender.

However, the God of the first two husbands (Logan Killicks and Jody Starks) is definitely a patriarchal figure who imparts undeserved punishments.

I don't interpret any of the characters questioning God but I do believe they maintain a curiosity about Him. They watch to discover who He is, they watch to catch a glimpse of His power, they watch to receive a unending stream of His love.

Just as we do.

I recieved my book right on time and it was in great shape! I paid much cheaper then I would have if I had bought in in the store. The book was also a great read too. I'm very pleased with my shopping experience.

What more can be said for any item that already has almost 400 reviews? If I can bring anything which others may not, it's a tie to the music. Having always loved Ring Games & Round Dances 2: Bahamas 1935 (a cd of field recordings by John Lomax and his local connections of the day) and noticed Ms. Hurston's small role in the liner notes mentioning seeing some of these dances and hearing some of this music herself, when Janie Mae Woods mentions being pushed away from the "rings plays" I felt I had an extra pass key into this world which is so vividly described by Ms. Hurston. I also felt I had another point of entry into the feelings of the ostracized Bahamian workers mentioned later in the book. I've heard the music Janie and Tea Cake were experiencing. I've moved to those same rhythms.

Their Eyes Were Watching God is more than I'd hoped, though I didn't know what I was expecting. Maybe 70% into the book I felt I'd begun to understand to what the title was referring, though it turns out I was wrong... maybe. I still think I was also right, though in a less literal sense. Partly self discovery, but mainly it's about freedom.

As much of a character-driven page-turner as it is, it's also invaluable as a snapshot of a USA that no one should have had to endure. There's no melodrama or sentimentality though. It struck me as being a purely honest look into a life as Zora knew it. I also think the book has taken on a new life now that we've all seen Hurricane Katrina.

Their Eyes is a remarkable achievement and deserves all the hype it has received in the years since Alice Walker and others have brought Zora Neale Hurston back into the public eye. I sense some of the same strength in her as I do in Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan.

Zora Neale Hurston was a pretty talented writer. This slim book is alleged to be her magnum opus, and it does have its merits. It shouldn't be overpraised, however, simply because of the skin-tone and genital configuration of the author...which, in these times, is probably asking too much. (If students held in captivity are forced to read A BLACK FEMALE WRITER, you could do a lot worse--a whole lot worse--than ol' Zora.)

Hurston has a mostly pleasing style, with few-and-far-between intrusions of pretension (plenty of jargon-laden pretension can be found in the forward and afterword, though)...the black vernacular is a bit wearying after a while, but the plot moves briskly--sometimes extremely briskly--and is never boring. (The novel hits its stride, however, only upon the introduction of Tea Cake.)

I'd wager a few bucks that this was one of Oprah Winfrey's book selections...but that should not be held against it. It may seem a credible bagatelle to a white devil like myself, but I'm sure there are many black women for whom this could be, like Alice Walker, the most important book in their lives.

This is a book! Only the best books--and this is one--transport you to that place, that time, those people. Here you hear it said, see it done, and feel that emotion. I have a habit of folding down the corners of the pages of a book where there is wisdom--so I have a quick reference for the human spirit. There are only a few books from my life of reading that have more pages folded than this book.

This book was a hard read because of the language used, but overall a very good book.

"Their Eyes were Watching God" has been variously described as feminist literature (though written in 1930), African-American literature (though the story is about people, first and foremost, and race is secondary to the novel) and as a lost masterpiece. It's a lost masterpiece. Thanks to Alice Walker and Oprah Winfrey, the book was brought back to the public's attention.

One of the issues with reading Hurston's novel is that it's written in dialect--in Hurston's rendition of how Southern Florida black dialect could be spelled out to her. So reading the book is a bit slow; you have to sound out the words in your mind. If this is a problem, then I'd suggest you listen to the book on tape (ably performed by Ruby Dee) and then read the book afterwards.

The story has barely a plot; Janey is a young woman who's grandmother was born in slavery. Her aspirations are no further than the front porch; to live in comfort means being simply able to sit, to sit on the porch and not be in constant motion, working every hour of every day for bare subsistence. She finds an older, established husband for Janey and insists she marry. Janey, then, has a life where, with reasonable work, she can fill her belly and sleep in shelter. Her life is not much better than that of a well-cared-for mule.

One day, Janey runs off with Jody Starks, a man of means who charms her with his worldy ways. This is a man going places. And they do go places; to Eatonville, a town that was chartered as an African-American community. Starks sees opportunity in every corner of dusty Eatonville, buys land, builds a store and a house and installs the beautiful Janey as a symbol of his mastery.

As Mayor, Starks has appearances to keep up. He has Janey stay in the house or work in the store, and when in the store, she is to keep her head covered. Janey has a wealth of long abundant hair, which Hurston uses as a symbol of life. Janey's hair is flowing and startling; men covet it. As the hair is covered, so is every enjoyment and thought Janey has. She chafes for 20 years under Stark's restrictive rules.

The scene where the "town mule"--a mule freed by Starks from an abusive owner and that became a sort of mascot, dies and is buried in the swamp is exceptional writing, worthy of Mark Twain. The mule is eulogized (by Stark, standing at one point on the mule as podium) and then abandoned to the waiting buzzards. The following scene where the buzzards arrive to do their undertaking is a flight of fancy that is hardly equalled in American literature. All along the book, Hurston takes smaller flights of language; her descriptions sometimes soar, or are humorous or completely imaginative.

Janey runs off after Stark's death with "Tea Cake"--a younger man. While her first two marriages were for the sustenance of the body (food, shelter, comfort, a home) this marriage is for the sustenance of the soul. Tea Cake plays guitar, plays games, dances, gambles, sings and flirts. Hurston is too clever to make him perfect; he hurts Janey, as only someone who loves another person can hurt them, and he is a bit of a cad, yet he brings out something in Janey that no life of pure material wealth could do--freedom and sensuality and joy. The culmination of the story is rather contrived, but still, the completion of the three marriages tells almost a fable-like story of a quest for personal growth. Janey comes home to Eatonville, and tells her story to Phoeby, her friend. The rest of the tale is up to us to fill in.

Sometimes the writing reminds me of Virginia Woolf--the interior dialog and mood of the character is the action as much or more than the action happening on the story's stage. Sometimes Hurston reminds me of Twain in her delving into the linguistic richness and uniqueness of Floridian life. Her education as a folklorist sharpened her ear, but her deep honesty into the interior life of women is what makes this story so great. It's definitely one of the top American novels and deserves to be read.

Zora Neale Hurston's novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God" has been analyzed, criticized, and lionized over the brief span of its existence. Lately, praise has predominated though with continued carping on issues which she made clear she considered secondary to her purpose.

Hurston's mastery of language places this work in the top tier of Anglophone literature, and the broadness of her comprehension defies spatial, temporal, social, or political confines. Her novel is powerful because it is humane and universal in scope. The story enchants because the voice relating it is unfailingly compassionate.

This lyrical voice was owned by no one but Hurston herself. Throughout her professional life, she remained true to her vision regardless of praise or criticism.

Ultimately, Hurston's literary worth, and that of her detractors, critics, and rivals, will be judged by generations to come. I'm confident that her stature will endure and her insistence on self-definition will be vindicated.

My son needed this book for school and we received in time for school. Great service!

This book has been an extremely enjoyable read for me. It had a certain easy flow to it that made you want to keep reading it. This book didn't hook me right away, but I still gave it a chance. I am glad that I gave it a chance because it turned out to be one of my favorite books. If you enjoy hearing a good story, i recommend this book to you. Actually, I recommend this book to anybody and everybody! When i was asked to rate this book on a scale from 1 to 10, I replied by saying an eleven because i thought that this book was that good.

This book is an easy read but it contains underling themes and plot structures that can be discussed in a class room setting. This is a good book and provides an interesting insight in young black woman's life who is trying to find her perfect mate.

This book is a good read from start to finish. Zora Neal Hurston is a true literary genius!

With most of the other reviewers who say that this book is a classic and wonderful and beautiful read. I absoulutely enjoyed and will read again and again.

This is one of my favorite books ever. The writing is wonderful and the characters are vibrant.

I agree with previous reviewers who felt the dialect Hurston uses is difficult to become accustomed to. Because of this, I couldn't give it five stars. Nonetheless, I would urge you to hang in there, as the effort it takes to "decipher" the dialogue is rewarded with a marvelous story. Set in Florida in the early 20th century, Janie lives the first half of her life for (and according to the expectations) of others. Only later in life does she begin to live her life for herself and on her own terms.

The book is truly a classic in the sense that it transcends time and race - we all, at one point or another, must take responsibility for our lives and live as we see fit. Only after Jeanie does this does she find not only love, but true happiness. It is a powerful, moving story that richly rewards the reader who works through the initial challenge of "deep Southern." Highly recommended.

I am very glad to have finally read this masterpiece. I admit to having avoided Zora Neale Hurston for years, for all the wrong reasons. I react badly to appeals to political correctness, diversity, and white male guilt. But these prejudices were completely blown out of the water by actually reading this radiant book. For Hurston simply writes about PEOPLE -- people of a particular race, gender, time, and place, yes -- but people whose human identity flourishes from these circumstances without being in any way confined by them. I don't think I have read any work of African-American literature that is so little concerned with race tensions, poverty, or the legacy of slavery. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. quotes in his fine afterword to the Harper Perennial edition, Hurston wanted to write about "racial health -- a sense of black people as complete, complex, UNDIMINISHED human beings, a sense that is lacking in so much black writing and literature" [emphasis hers].

For all that, THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD is a difficult book to begin. At first, Hurston seems to be writing in two languages, likely to be equally foreign to many readers. One is the phonetically rendered dialect of her characters, which her contemporaries criticized as making them sound ignorant, but is in fact part and parcel of their vigorous life. The other is the free-form poetry of her descriptions, ordinary words strung together in unexpected ways so that they become quite new. But soon the two voices become as one: the voice of thought unfettered by academic rules. And the power of unfettered thought, the possibility of being oneself without regard to rules or roles, is the enduring theme of the book.

The story is a simple one. Janie Crawford, fortyish, independent, returns to her community in 1920s Florida, which she had left two years before to marry a much younger man, nicknamed Tea Cake. While most of the women gossip disapprovingly, assuming the worst, she starts to tell her friend Pheoby not only about her life with Tea Cake, but also about the two marriages that preceded it. The first, when she was only a teenager, offered her protection. The second brought a measure of material prosperity. But it is only in the hand-to-mouth existence of the third that she has been able to discover her true self. Janie's story, which began in defiance, ends in quiet luminosity -- and there are many years of her life still ahead of her.

Zora Neale Hurston was also a folklorist, and her writing is illuminated not only by the gossip, traded insults, and tall stories of the Florida blacks, but also by a country mythology that brings in animals and even plants as characters in the story. There are wonderful set pieces, such as the funeral of a mule that begins as a holiday for the entire community and ends with a humorous description of a group of buzzards waiting on permission from their leader before stripping the bones. Other sequences build detail upon detail to terrifying effect, as the South Florida hurricane of 1928 that forms the climax of the book, and precipitates its concluding events.

The Harper Perennial paperback is a joy to read, with a cover design by Robin Bilardello that calls to mind a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci, an excellent foreword by Edwige Danticat, and the Henry Louis Gates afterword. One piece of advice though: read the afterword first, if you like, but save the foreword to the end, as it gives away many details of the plot that you will enjoy discovering for yourself, surrendering to Hurston's magnificent narrative rhythm.

Couldn't put this book down. More fascinating than fun to read. It was
so good I gave it away and then had to buy another copy.

Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891-January 28, 1960) was one of the most important, insightful and forgotten authors who was especially prolific during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s through the 1940s. This was a very important period of time in the United States, because these decades truly were an especially prolific time for great African-American artists, writers, dancers, musicians, photographers and others to truly express their gifts to the world. Hurston was no exception. Born in Notasulga, Alabama, and eventually relocated to Eatonville, Florida, Hurston based much of her novels on the experiences of those around her, in the predominantly African-American Southern town. With a degree in Anthropology, she found the opportunity to do ethnographic research on those close to her, and truly wove some fascinating and unflinchingly realistic looks at the Southern Black experience.

THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD (written in 1937) follows the story of the main character Janey, and her experiences with three very different sorts of men, told in flashback style to her best friend, Phoebe. Janey's idealistic image of the relationships between men and women is not realized in reality. In fact, the common theme of woman "as mule," or beast of burden, for men, keeps resurfacing. This novel has been criticized by scholars and intellectuals alike, for what is described as a racist depiction of Southern Black life, during the early part of the 20th century. For me, this was not the case. I really believe that Zora Neale Hurston was channeling the experiences of many Black women she interviewed, over time, and wanted to present a realistic picture of the hardships they endured and [sometimes] overcame. Beautiful........Though, Zora died many years ago and wasn't well-recognized by a more mainstream audience, until Alice Walker brought her to the attention of many in the 1970s, I believe that her writing is alive and powerful today as the day she wrote it.

If I could give this book zero stars, I would do so. There's barely a plot: the protagonist, Janie, marries three men and kills the last one because he gets rabies. The end. Janie is the ultimate antiheroin. She comes off as this oppressed little wife who takes forever to speak out against her husbands. It would have been better if Alice Walker had not "found" Zora Hurston and brought this awful book back into the public.

Six years ago I was cleaning out my grandmother's house to be sold after she passed away. I came across letters written around the same time period that this novel was to have taken place. When I read this book, the dialogue was so familiar. The letters were written phonetically much like the book. Reading them did make it difficult to comprehend and just like the book, at first it slowed the reading process for me but it began to sound like poetry. A previous reviewer said it best "the dialogue captures the southern drawl and syntax to its truest form." I had never heard of Hurston before this novel and probably would not have had it not been promoted by Oprah. I did not see the movie so I cannot compare.

Some will not like the dialogue and find it hard to follow and some will not be able to relate to the characters or the life as it was at that time. This should be included in reading list for schools. This is fiction but this represents a time and a people and the reality that should not be lost in history.

At first, you are not sure if this story is going to mirror the Color Purple - a bright but censored black woman lives a daily horror beneath the strong and beating hand of her possessive and overtly abusive husband. A black woman's life of submission in the "freed" south is questionably worse than her grandparents' life in slavery. And, like Color Purple's Celie, Janie - this story's protagonist and narrator - emerges from her sour daily drudgery to an enlightened happiness.

And, each protagonist emerges in a manner which was daring in their respective generation's eye. Celie left her purgatory for a wonderful lesbian relationship with Shug. Janie, in this 1937 novel, ties the knot at 40 years of age with 25-year old Tea Cake. Their unorthodox love is not dwarfed by the orthodoxy experienced by others. In fact, the importance of the love story of this novel creeped up and surprised this reader. I was expecting more shenanigans, and less love, but I was wrong.

Unlike Color Purple, the dialogue is painstakingly true to the characters. Written phonetically, which makes it difficult to comprehend at first and slows down the reading of the entire novel, the dialogue captures the southern drawl and syntax to its truest form. It is arguable that no writer better depicts character with dialogue than Hurston does in this novel.

Others have found reason to dislike this book because of the dialogue, because of the topic, or because of the two together. But, those characteristics of this novel are the fiber from which this novel's strength begins -- which elevates this novel so as to be heralded by almost all.

Being someone who finished school before this novel was rediscovered, I can only ask that teachers demand to employ this novel in the English curricula of today's children.

I ordered the movie and just had to get the book. The book's is okay kinda of hard to read the ebonic wording of that era. But overall it's a good book.

Unless you are an immature tramp I cannot fathom how you could enjoy, relate or even read this nonsense. The style and to a lesser extent the story hold merit on a historical basis, but the plot is dated and obscured to the wanna-feel-empowered nobodies of the world. That people think this is a great book betrays how foolish the reading public are; seriously, just stick to what Oprah tells you to read, or better, simply plop down in front of the television and watch 'reality.'

I am not saying this is not an important book; it is. But if you think it possesses literary Quality, read 'Confessions of Nat Turner,' 'Go Tell It On the Mountain,' 'The Invisible Man,' 'Native Son,' and tell me that this book belongs in the same class of fiction as these novels.

Am I biased? Yes, completely, I think that the work of women does not compare favorably to what men have achieved in letters. I mean, "Atlas Shrugged" is one of the most horrid things mankind has produced! But there is the converse....I mean, how many great wives, how many good stay-at-home moms have been men?

Zora Neale Hurston was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist. She was born on January 7th, 1891 in Eatonville, Flordia and is the fifth of eight children. On Steptember through March of 1936, Zora was in Haiti, where she wrote " Their Eyes Were Watching God" in seven weeks. The on September 1937 she returns back to the U.S and " Their Eyes Were Watching God" was published on September 18th. This book was the most highly acclaimed novel. This story is really good but is hard to read because of its native american language. This novel is about a girl named Janie Ceawford who lives with her grandmother because her mother ran off. Janie tells the story of her three marriages, her life, and how she overcomes. The one beautiful day she meets a younger man named Tea Cake who helps her enjoy her life. Her friend Pheoby is always there for her as she struggles through her journey.