The Little WAC Celebrates Zora Neal Hurston's Birthday

Words By Raymond Tyler

I come from a family of readers and my father had a copy of Their Eyes Were Watching God that is definitely an early edition is his library.

I recall seeing the title as a child and wanting to pick it up.

I however, always questioned whether I could hold my breath long enough to understand a book with a title as deep as Their Eyes Were Watching God?

 

Finally one day at a Border's I saw a copy on sale for about $5 and I figured it was time to add this classic to my own personal book collection.

 

Reading Their Eyes Were Watching God changed my life, before I had even finished it.

I marveled at the way Hurston married poetry to her prose.

In fact, I am glad that Hurston is not known as a poetry writer. If Hurston's poetry were as prolific, creative and textured as the prose from Their Eyes Were Watching God? I would probably have to give up my pen as a poet.

 

What also brought me great joy was to see that Hurston had very clearly influenced two of my favorite books TUMBLING by Diane McKinney Whetstone and ONLY TWICE I'VE WISHED FOR HEAVEN by Dawn Turner Trice (both books I had read before Their Eyes Were Watching God.)

 

I plan on sharing Their Eyes Were Watching God with my niece because I want her to become a great writer, and realize that the bar is a little higher than even her "dear old" Uncle Raymond.

 

While Hurston's writing still stands after all these years, Hurston is also rightly given a queen's status in history for taking her readers on a tour of her native Florida.

 

What press reporter David Simon did for Baltimore with HBO's The Wire, Hurston did in all of her novels for rural and black Florida. We were taken to the insides of juke joints, shacks and treated to God's own country through her prose. Hurston gave us access to the parts of Florida that you never see on the tour and she introduced us to the people that love Florida that you won't see in "The Society Pages."

 

Sadly, at the time of it's release many Black Intellectuals did not give Their Eyes Were Watching God the credit and praise it was due. Despite the powerful message of empowerment and freedom to young women and despite how grandly well written the book is, "the black establishment" of the time criticized Hurston for not writing a more direct and confrontational book.

 

I would like to think if I had been a columnist at the time I would have told my Black Intellectual Brothers to relax. We have a wealth of books and essays that attack the institutions of racism and classism in America. Their Eyes Were Watching God however, is a grand jewel of a book that teaches through experience and song rather than preaching and political speak. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a love story for Janie Starks, for Florida, for everyone that enjoys great writing, and for generations yet to learn the joy of reading.

 

The birthday of Zora Neal Hurston is truly a day worth celebrating.