Zora Neale Hurston
1937
Around 240 pages
I can't even remember the last book on the List that was written by a person of color, as this List is whiter than my hometown in suburban Pennsylvania. But the 30s really came to play, and this is another excellent addition to the List. We are a bit of a hot streak, with some exceptions of course.
Janie Crawford, an African-American woman in her forties, recounts her life, beginning with her sexual awakening, which she compares to a blossoming pear tree kissed by bees in spring. Um, okay. Is that relatable to anybody? Janie was raised by her grandmother after her mother left. She gets in several tumultuous relationships, with every person in her life trying to control her.
Janie Crawford is a great character, and doesn't need to stand for every black woman in existence. The story of her liberation was fascinating to read, even if it is extremely frustrating getting there. Hurston's deft use of imagery demonstrates that she deserves her status as one of the greats.
A must read and I really have to look into more of her work.
RATING: *****
Interesting Facts:
Richard Wright condemned Their Eyes Were Watching God, writing in a review:
"Miss Hurston seems to have no desire whatsoever to move in the direction of serious fiction… [She] can write; but her prose is cloaked in that facile sensuality that has dogged Negro expression since the days of Phyllis Wheatley... Her characters eat and laugh and cry and work and kill; they swing like a pendulum eternally in that safe and narrow orbit in which America likes to see the Negro live: between laughter and tears." Isn't that where all human beings live?
Ralph Ellison said the book contained a "blight of calculated burlesque." How dare she be calculated.
Men sure hate it when women do things.
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