Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston
My friends laugh at the way I organize my books. I have shelves devoted to fiction, nonfiction, poetry. Authors are arranged alphabetically. Books by the same author are arranged chronologically. It may be going too far. Perhaps – but only perhaps.
My friends say I am anal retentive, a control freak. There are days I am inclined to agree with them, though I hate such labels. They don't apply to any other area of my life. Anyone who visits my office at the Loft and finds a messy desk with telephone messages scrawled on scraps of paper, invoices and other paper work strewn about the desk, piles of resource materials stacked haphazardly on my bookcase would know the truth.
But my books are different. They are friends to whom I owe a great debt. Like good friends, they have saved me from trouble more than once, and have provided me comfort when I most needed it. When my friends joke about my book arrangement, I ask them how they organize address books. Don't they list friends by name, or in some other way meaningful to them? Surely, they are not just written in randomly, according to the date one made the friendship?
More often than not, I am greeted with blank stares in response to such questions. But think of it: in a moment of need, don't you want to be able to find a friend's phone number easily? Someone you can call up and say “I know it's been awhile, but I really need to talk to you.”?
Books do that for me. Something happens in my life – minor personal triumphs or tragedies or far-reaching global events – I like to be able to turn to friends. Most often, I turn to books before I turn to people. It is not that I don't like interacting with people; I just like gathering my thoughts with an old but silent friend before I join in conversation with others.
When Hurricane Katrina hit, I was, like so many millions, devastated. I couldn't believe what was happening just south of me: in a city I had spent time in; in a region I had driven through and had admired; in a nation where I didn't believe such a thing could happen. I was horribly angry. I was horribly grief-stricken. I needed to talk to an old friend. And the only friend I knew I could go to was my worn old copy of Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God .
I knew exactly where to go. Somehow, my fingers just flipped to the right pages. Janie Mae Crawford and Tea Cake and their friends huddled in the shack in the Everglades while a hurricane raged outside. Crouched under a kitchen table, they looked out through a window: “They seemed to be staring into the darkness, but their eyes were watching God.” The hurricane passes and they start the long journey through devastation for some help, some compassion, not at all unlike the thousands I watched on the nightly news in September of 2005. I clung to Janie, the way she clung to that cow trying to get out of the flood waters.
I found out I wasn't alone in turning to Zora Neale Hurston during that time. For a benefit the Loft held for hurricane relief, Twin Cities actress Sonja Parks read a passage from the hurricane scene in Their Eyes Were Watching God. The keynote speaker for the Loft's Big Read edition of Talking Volumes, Haitian-born author Edwidge Danticat, who wrote the foreword to the most recent edition of Hurston's novel, told Star Tribune book editor Sarah T. Williams that she turned to that scene as Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast.
This is what great works of literature – of all art – do: they provided us solace when it is most needed.
Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is a classic in every sense of the word. It is storytelling at its absolute finest. And it is storytelling told within the guise of storytelling: Janie Mae Crawford returns to her home in Eatonville, Florida, after a long absence. Her friend Pheoby Watson comes to ask her where she's been and thus the story of Janie's life unfolds.
From a table in a kitchen, we learn the sorrows and the joys of Janie Mae Crawford: her dedicated grandmother who believes the best future for Janie is to push her into a financially secure marriage; the husband who works her like a mule; the man who saves her from that loveless marriage, only to adore her too much; and the true love that finally comes her way.
Janie's story is one of self-revelation and self-empowerment. The power of her story, the strength Janie demonstrates while telling it, inspires her friend Pheoby to change her life.
This is the true power of the novel: what happens to us if we all, as individuals, sit down to share the stories of our lives? What heals inside us in the telling? Hearing that story, what inspires others to take action? What might prevent tragedy from occurring?
Some novels you set down and never think of again. Others stay with you for the rest of your life. Whether you return to that book physically or in thought only makes no difference – it remains with you forever. That is what makes a book great. It is not a place on the New York Times best-seller list or an Oprah Book Club selection. It is the impression it leaves on your mind. If, years after reading a novel, events in the world make you think of that book, of those characters, inspire you to go to your shelves and take the book down and read it again, it has achieved everything the author set out to do.
There are many plot summaries of Their Eyes Were Watching God available on the Web, as well as resources available at your local library and through the special Big Read reader's guide prepared by the National Endowment for the Arts. You can find more information through these links:
http://www.harpercollins.com/global_scripts/product_catalog/book_xml.asp?isbn=0060931418&tc=cx
http://www.zoranealehurston.cc/
www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/eyes
www.readinggroupguides.com/guides/their_eyes_were_watching_god
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Their_Eyes_Were_Watching_God
To receive a copy of the reader's guide and an audio guide prepared by the National Endowment for the Arts for Their Eyes Were Watching God , please call 612-215-2592 or e-mail zora@loft.org with “Reader's Guide” in the subject line.
HELP FOR BOOK CLUBS
Whether you are a first-time or long-standing book group, these tips can help you create a unique experience for a discussion of Their Eyes Were Watching God :
- Be prepared: Refer to the reader's guide prepared by the National Endowment for the Arts, Harper Collins, or many of the other fine guides on the Web for questions to guide your discussion. Consider the questions and your group membership: which questions seem most relevant to the people who will be attending?
- Narrow your focus: There are many issues raised in the novel, including domestic abuse, intergenerational relationships, social justice, and more. Consider picking one or two topics of specific interest to your book club around which to center your discussion.
- Have fun! There are many opportunities in the novel to have fun with members of your book club. Here are just a few suggestions:
• Book Club Kits: Hennepin County Library has included Their Eyes Where Watching God as one of their Book Club Kit titles. Visit their site for books, background information, and much more.
http://www.hclib.org/pub/books/bookclubkit/
• Register your bookclub: Register your book club and the Loft Literary Center will send you The Big Read packet, including reading guides, bookmarks, buttons, and information on the Center's Big Read events.
http://www.hclib.org/pub/books/bigread/
• Have a potluck: Ask members of the group to bring food based on the novel. Possibilities might include beef stew, catfish, beaten biscuits, cornbread, sweet corn, macaroni and cheese. Consult your local library, bookstore, or cooking store for cookbooks featuring Southern recipes.
• Have a hat party: Zora Neale Hurston was famous for her love of hats. Every year in her hometown of Eatonville, there is a Zora Neale Hurston Festival, complete with hat party. Ask members of your book group to wear their finest, funkiest, funniest hats and award prizes in each category.
• Tell tales: Zora Neale Hurston traveled the Southern United States collection folk tales. Ask members of your group to come prepared to tell a folk tale from their own memory. It could be a cultural folk tale that they grew up with, something that happened in their families, or something they just invented on the way over to the meeting. If your group members are nervous about telling their own tales, have selections from Hurston's collection Every Tongue Got to Confess available for members to recite. Award prizes for the most convincing, funniest, or inspiring tales told.
• Be a porch sitter: Much of the action of Their Eyes Were Watching God takes place with folks sitting on a porch talking. Space and weather permitting, hold your book group out on a front porch. Invite passers-by to join you and to tell their own tales.
• Have a checkers tournament : Secure enough checker boards that every member of your group can pair off to play. Mark each pairing with a number. The winner of “Group 1” plays the winner of “Group 3;” the winner of “Group 2” plays the winner of “Group 4.” Continue playing until you are down to just two players. Award a prize to the checker champion.
• Share your idioms : Zora Neale Hurston loved language and the ways in which people in different parts of the country used it. This is evident in the rich, colorful language in Their Eyes Were Watching God , a natural reflection of what Hurston saw every day of her life. Think of where you live now and where you have lived. What expressions are unique to where you live now? To where you were born? What expressions do you hold on to from your hometown that you have to explain to folks from elsewhere? What expressions have you encountered traveling the United States that you did not understand? Here are a few examples from my own experience:
• Shortly after moving to Minnesota, a friend asked me to ‘borrow' him a pencil. I thought he was just being funny or had mixed his words up. I then heard several people say ‘borrow me such-and-such' rather than ‘lend me' and came to realize that this was a quirk of Minnesota speech, perhaps influenced by German immigrants.
• I grew up in Pittsburgh, a city rich in its own idiomatic quirks. When I lived with friends in San Francisco, I thought nothing of telling them to ‘red up the room' before guests came over. They stared at me blankly, having no idea that I was asking them to clean. I'm not quite sure the evolution, but I believe the expression arrives from “to make ready,” hence you ‘red up.' (Pittsburghers will also say ‘pick up the room' meaning ‘to clean,' an expression that also caused my friends quite a bit of confusion and amusement.)
- Get involved: As a group, get your book club to volunteer for a cause related to the novel or to reading. Among the possibilities: volunteer with a domestic violence project; read books to the blind; solicit for book drives in your community; create a family storytelling hour in your community center; get involved with hurricane relief efforts in your area.
- Read, Read, Read: Reading and discussing books with a group of friends is a great activity. Consider ways to get the rest of your family involved, if they aren't already. Reading is a family activity, long after children start reading for themselves. Choose books that you and your family can enjoy together, much in the same way you chose a movie to rent. You might want to introduce your children to a book that you loved as a child. Encourage your children to select books that they love for discussion. Bring the discussion to a bigger table. For instance, family reunions are full of various activities. Suggest that one of those activities be a book discussion. Select a book that has relevance for your family (it may be setting, time period, theme, etc.) and include the book title and information about the discussion group in the invitation. Also consider a family storytelling hour during your reunion: invite everyone to get up and share stories about the family.
The possibilities for discussion and for fun activities related to a book are endless. These are just a few suggestions. We would love to hear others that you may have. Please e-mail us at zora@loft.org with your suggestions.
