Book review: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. 

Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. the dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.

I never thought I'd be re-reading Their Eyes Were Watching God this year, but after watching the film adaptation on BBC recently, I had to dust off my old copy and re-introduce myself to this beautiful piece of work.

Janie has big dreams of love and romance, but as a woman sho lived through slavery, her grandmother tells Janie: "De nigger woman is de mule ah de world". So at sixteen, Janie is married off to old Logan Killicks who "look like some ole skull-head in de grave yard". Married life, however, doesn't hold the love and romance that she dreamed, but is just as lonely and confining as her previous life. When Jody Starks comes along with his big plans of building Eatonville, the only town in the United States with  a solely black community, Janie leaves behind Logan Killicks and the hard labour of the farm, and starts a new and successful life with Jody who goes on to become the Mayor of Eatonville. But even Joe's high life fails to fulfil  her hopes or dreams:

Janie stood where [Jody] left her for unmeasured time and thought. She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her. Then she went inside there to see what it was. It was her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered. But looking at it she saw that it never was the flesh and blood figure of her dreams. Just some thing she had grabbed up to drape her dreams over. In a way she turned her back upon the image where it lay and looked further. She had no more blossomy openings dusting pollen over her man, neither any glistening young fruit where the petals used to be.

Years later, after the death of Jody, Janie falls in love with Tea Cake, the man of her dreams that liberates her not with money or a high life, but with a packet of flowering seeds. This is the most beautiful part of the story - Zora Neale Hurston's writing flows with lyricism and evocative imagery. How could anyone who reads this book not fall in love with Tea Cake?

She couldn’t make [Tea Cake] look just like any other man to her. He looked like the love thoughts of women. He could be a bee to a blossom – a pear tree blossom in the spring. He seemed to be crushing scent out of the world with his footsteps. Crushing aromatic herbs with every step he took. Spices hung about him. He was a glance from God. 

Their Eyes Were Watching God is renowned as an African-American feminist classic, but it's a lot more than just that: it's an achingly human story of friendship, love, beauty and the liberation of the human spirit. You must, must read it.

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.