Zora Neale Hurston has crafted a masterpiece in Their Eyes Were Watching God. A black woman's journey of coming into her own, I found Janie's story a pure delight. It's a novel of black experience and also feminism. I like how she couched the story inside telling her neighbor friend her tale. I like how little the white people figure into the story - they show up with ingrained oppression, but the story isn't about them. I like Janie's interesting interaction with Mrs. Turner, a black woman prejudiced against black-skinned people. (See the quote from page 138.) I especially like how we get to see the world through Janie's perspective, the beauty in description and in the vernacular. She has plenty of struggles but at the end we find her feeling content, with experience and memories and full with living.
Just read it.
Page 15: "You know, honey, us colored folks is branches without roots and that makes things come round in queer ways. You in particular. Ah was born back due in slavery so it wasn't for me to fulfill my dreams of whut a woman oughta be and to do. Dat's one of de hold-backs of slavery. But nothing can't stop you from wishin'. You can't beat nobody down so low till you can rob 'em of they will."
Page 138: Anyone who looked more white folkish than herself was better than she was in her criteria, therefore it was right that they should be cruel to her at times, just as she was cruel to those more negroid than herself in direct ration to their negroness. Like the pecking-order in a chicken yard. Insensate cruelty to those you can whip, and groveling submission to those you can't. Once having set up her idols and built alters to them it was inevitable that she would worship there. It was inevitable that she should accept any inconsistency and cruelty from her deity as all good worshippers do from theirs.
Page 151: The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time. They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.
Page 182: "Ah know all dem sitters-and-talkers gointuh worry they guts into fiddle strings till dey find out whut we been talkin' 'bout. Dat's all right, Pheoby, tell 'em. Dey gointuh make 'miration 'cause mah love didn't work lak they love, if dey ever had any. Then you must tell 'em dat love ain't somethin' lak uh grindstone dat's de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It's uh movin' thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it's different with every shore."
