On September 18, 1937, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston was released. Centered on the protagonist Janie Crawford, a proud and independent African-American woman, the book had minimal success at first. Today the novel is an essential part of the American literary canon.
Hurston was born to a family of Alabama former slaves in 1891. When she was young her family moved to Eatonville, FL, to escape the indignities of sharecropping life in the segregated South. They lived in the first incorporated black town in America, which allowed her dad the freedom to become a preacher and mayor. Hurston worked her way through school and graduated from Howard University, publishing her first story in the college’s literary magazine.
In the 1920’s, Hurston arrived in New York City to pursue a writing career during the height of the Harlem Renaissance. She became a fixture in the Harlem art scene, counting Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen as her friends. After publishing her first novel, “Jonah Gourd’s Vine” in 1934, Hurston earned a prestigious Guggenheim fellowship that afforded her the time to write her most popular novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Even though it was in vogue among her activist peers, Hurston avoided writing a political novel, instead portraying the quotidian existence of African-Americans living in Florida. She included their local dialect and this artistic decision made her fall out of favor with her Harlem Renaissance contemporaries. They thought Hurston’s book was superficial while dangerously perpetuating racial stereotypes they had been working to overcome.
Hurston died in 1960, but interest in her writing was revived with Alice Walker’s 1975 Ms. Magazine essay, “In Search of Nora Zeale Hurston.” Walker introduced a younger generation of readers, including Oprah Winfrey, to the talented author who had been out-of-print for decades. Publishers put Hurston back in print in 1978. Winfrey turned the novel into a 2005 film that aired on ABC, starring Halle Berry.
Now considered a fiction must-read, Hurston has posthumously found a celebrated place in America’s literary history.