Their Eyes Were Watching God: Audiobook

 

My Thoughts:

This audiobook, narrated by Ruby Dee, legendary American actress and wife of Ossie Davis, does a heart wrenching reading of Zora Neale Hurston's classic. Ms. Dee cherishes the richness and beauty of Hurston's writing in a way that brings honor to the poetry and rhythm of the text. As Dee was reading, I remembered how achingly beautiful the text was. I am sorry that I have forgotten over these almost 20 years since I taught this in AP English. I remember my students having a hard time with the character's patois, but when Ms. Dee reads, it just sounds like music to me: universal. 

[Janie] was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her.

 

I wanted to listen to this audiobook because The Great Gatsby is in the 11th grade curriculum in Hawaiʻi as a must teach novel and one of my pushback or extension novels to Gatsby was Ms. Hurston's Eyes. I wanted to see if I would still pair the two and I think I would. After the hurricane, and even before in the ʻGlades, we see the way lighter blacks are at an advantage, even amongst other blacks. When Tea Cake is told to help and bury the bodies, they are instructed to make sure that no whites are accidentally buried with blacks. The whites also get pine coffins whereas the blacks are just buried in large holes.  Tea Cake says "Theyʻs mighty particular how dese dead folks goes tuh judgement. . .Look lak dey think God don't know nothin' ʻbout de Jim Crow las."

Gatsby  is very much about money and class, but even when Tea Cake has the money, the whites still see him as a black man, and thus inferior. 
I am never surprised when my English/language arts candidates have never read either Gatsby or Eyes in high school or college. These novels are very old, but I think the new pairing of these works, written in a similar period in America is ripe for new eyes. 

Summary from the Publisher:

Their Eyes Were Watching God, an American classic, is the luminous and haunting novel about Janie Crawford, a Southern Black woman in the 1930s, whose journey from a free-spirited girl to a woman of independence and substance has inspired writers and readers for close to 70 years.
This poetic, graceful love story, rooted in Black folk traditions and steeped in mythic realism, celebrates boldly and brilliantly African-American culture and heritage. And in a powerful, mesmerizing narrative, it pays quiet tribute to a Black woman who, though constricted by the times, still demanded to be heard.
Originally published in 1937 and long out of print, the book was reissued in 1975 and nearly three decades later Their Eyes Were Watching God is considered a seminal novel in American fiction.