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kisha is Currently Reading

kisha is currently reading

Their Eyes Were Watching God

by Zora Neale Hurston

bookshelves: african-american-fiction, classics, books-that-are-movies, chick-lit, rereads, currently-reading

Reading for the 3rd time

read in December 2012

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kisha said: " Edit: every time I read this I have a different feeling. My current rating is 5 stars.

Older review before edit:
I was first introduced to Zora Neale Hurston and Their Eyes Were Watching God, in high school. It was my 9th grade summer reading. I was Edit: every time I read this I have a different feeling. My current rating is 5 stars.

Older review before edit:
I was first introduced to Zora Neale Hurston and Their Eyes Were Watching God, in high school. It was my 9th grade summer reading. I was in love with this story. Probably because my 14 year old mind wasn't ready for the likes of Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare, Ayn Rand, and others that we were forced to read so I was glad to read a story with a theme I liked by someone of my own color in my English class for once. All these years later I have to admittingly take away 2 stars.

Let me first say that I respect Hurston and this book as one of the great American Literary novels. More importantly I love what this book stands for outside of the novel. And by that I mean the struggle Hurston went through to have the freedom to write what she wanted to write. When she wrote this novel, she was expected to write a typical post-slavery type novel with a strong focus on racism. That's not what she invisioned for TEWWG. In fact, there was no racism in the story at all. At least not by white people. She said something before about how can she write a book that satisfy them but not her when the whole moral of her story was freedom (for the most part). So she did exactly what she wanted to do. I loved that about this story. I also loved the love story between Janie and Tea Cake. I was overwhelmed by the amount of simile, metaphors, symbolism, and the language of the narration which was a good thing.

I must admit, I hadn't any emotional attachment to any character not even Janie or Tea Cake. In fact I don't think Tea Cake was as good a man as she wanted us to believe he was. He wasn't my favorite character. I don't think Hurston did a good job manipulating an emotional connection between reader and character. I didn't like or dislike any characters. She wasn't very detail-oriented and left out major pieces of the story that I think would be needed to understand the characters. The dialect was distracting and overused which made it hard to read, and I'm used to reading novels with the use of dialect with no problem.
(Below may be considered spoilers. But I don't really think so. Point being read at your own descretion.)
But most of all; I don't think it represented anything she's credited for, such as strength. Everyone talked about how it was a great love story about strength and womanhood. I didn't get that at all. She was in three marriages in which she was controlled. Even Tea Cake had his controlling ways. And she was very submissive to each husband and dependent as well. In fact her whole being was validated by men. I can see maybe freedom because through Tea Cake she was able to be herself and do things she never done before and found happiness. But even with that being said, her freedom and happiness was found through a man. I must say I think the book was given too much praise and I can understand why it didn't do what she wanted it to do during the years when it was published. Yet and still it was a good read, she's a good storyteller just not a great writer. I didn't see the big feminine empowerment moment that I was sold. Honestly, I think the movie was better. At least the love story was. ...more "

progress:

(page 130 of 238)
— Dec 04, 2012 12:43PM

Jan 31, 2023 09:56PM · see review