Context

Set in the post-Reconstruction era when Jim Crow laws were at their peak, Their Eyes Were Watching God follows one woman’s journey to find her voice and independence at a time when gender roles often categorized women as the property of men. Zora Neale Hurston was inspired by her own experiences growing up in the Deep South—using her childhood in the all-black town of Eatonville as the story’s backdrop and basing the character of Tea Cake on a real-life lover.

Controversial in 1937 when it was first published, for its use of vernacular and dialect, the book’s soulful dialogue provides a poignant and personal way of understanding the struggles faced by people of color in the American South, and preserves the oral history of African American culture.

Emerging as an author of distinction during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, Hurston resisted the Uplift agenda of other writers of the day—a framework in which Negro intellectuals were expected to cast positive images and be role models for their race. She once explained that her work didn’t have a broad focus on racial issues: “I am not interested in the race problem, but I am interested in the problems of individuals, white ones and black ones.”

Their Eyes Were Watching God initially had an underwhelming reception—often criticized for promoting stereotypes that portrayed blacks in a negative light. At one point the book went out of print, becoming dangerously close to fading into obscurity when Alice Walker’s 1975 essay, “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston” for Ms. magazine brought a renewed interest to the author’s work. Today, Their Eyes Were Watching God has reclaimed its place as one of the 20th century’s most essential novels.