Literary Herstories: What Their Eyes Were Watching God Taught Me About Life and Writing

On the anniversary of the January 7th birthday of novelist, anthropologist, folklorist, essayist, and playwright Zora Neale Hurston I contemplate the meaning of one of her most well known and loved literary works, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Zora Neale Hurston, known as “The Genius of the South” was born on January 7, 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama. Hurston was raised in Eatonville, Florida. Hurston attended college at Howard University in Washington, DC and earned an associates’ degree in 1920. She studied anthropology at Barnard College in New York 1925–1927. In 1927, Hurston left New York to head to Florida to collect folklore. She earned the B.A. degree at Barnard College in 1928. Hurston traveled to Haiti on a fellowship in 1937 and wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God in seven weeks. Their Eyes Were Watching God was published in the United States on September 18, 1937. As I reflect on the meaning of Hurston’s seminal work, I think about what the novel teaches.

About Writing

Hurston’s Their Eyes taught me to write what you know. Hurston’s mastery of the written word comes to life in her use of poetic, vernacular, and figurative language. A folklorist at heart, the stories of southern Black Floridians lived in Hurston’s voice, as she poured Janie Starks’ story onto the pages. The orality of Their Eyes Were Watching God was poetry in my mind. The same kind of poetry that could be spoken, set to music, dramatized…