Their Eyes Were Watching God and a little bit Zora

by Heather Jones

Zora Neale Hurston's writing is peak perfection. Case in point this line from Their Eyes Were Watching God: "There are years that ask questions and years that answer."

She writes in a way that captures the experience of anyone with a heart. She's a PERFECT example of someone shaped by circumstances.  Her work makes me think of how it is to move through humanity and learn to feel at home in one's own skin. Born in the southern United States, part of her childhood was spent in Eatonville, Florida, the first all-black incorporated town in the USA AND the setting of TEWWG. As an adult, she traveled widely, including with a theater troupe and as an anthropologist. Her travels and connections via a patron brought her to New York City, where she became a notable member of the Harlem Renaissance. That is of note because they intentionally celebrated black culture in literature and broke away from stereotypes.

Set in Eatonville, Florida, which was established 20ish years AFTER the American Civil War, Their Eyes Were Watching God explores black culture as it is, not as it was. And talk about female empowerment, Zora changes the game with her character, Janie, in TEWWG. Janie has a curiosity and confidence that drive her to experience and relate to the world independently of circumstances and the past.

Zora Neale Hurston writes like a woman on a mission:

"I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes."

~  How It Feels To Be Colored Me by ZNH

The more I learn about Zora, the more fascinated I am by her. Recently, I met someone attending the book talk I give on one luxury Mississippi riverboat cruise who informed me that there is a ZORA FESTIVAL?! What kind of fake fan have I been not to know about this?! It's now on my bucket list. 

While Zora (I can call her Zora, right?) was inspired by the folklore she learned in her travels around the world as an anthropologist, she did her best writing about what she knew best - the Southern United States. She had COURAGE to write how and what she wrote. It turns out, she was way more true to Zora than she was to any critic or mentor. Resulting from the kind of courage is storytelling that transcends time, life experiences, and even race. 

I could go on and on about her, but one quick story...

Although she had been celebrated in literary circles in her younger years, Zora was literally working as a housekeeper at the end of her life, trying to make ends meet. Their Eyes Were Watching God hadn't even been widely published. She had no idea that she would be one of the most widely read black writers to date, but Alice Walker of The Color Purple fame discovers and becomes enchanted by Zora, traveling to visit her gravesite. Once she arrives, Walker pays tribute to her by replacing her deteriorating headstone with one that is engraved with the words, "A GENIUS OF THE SOUTH".

Agreed, and thank you very much.

New York Times best-selling author and poet Clint Smith says of Zora: "She documented so many stories that might have otherwise been forgotten, and she looked at black southerners and said, "You are worthy of literature."

I am always on the lookout for the ghosts of history that haunt the South.

Slavery, civil war, reconstruction, and all that came along with it, as well as generational poverty, are the foundation on which Zora Neale Hurston reinvented literature for herself and her people, for women, and for Southerners. And, in this way, a few more ghosts of the South are dispelled...

My painting inspired by Their Eyes Were Watching God.

If you enjoy Southern lit as much as I do, you NEED this tee, hoodies or baseball jersey offered in multiple colors and sizes.