Zora Neale Hurston - Their Eyes Were Watching God Paperback

Written in 1937, and praised by white book reviewers for being a "rich and racy love story, if somewhat awkward" and criticized by black critics for not writing fiction in the protest tradition. The most influential black writer of the time, Richard Wright wrote that Hurston's book did for literature what the minstrel shows did for theater, it made white folks laugh at black folks. Throughout the 1940s & 50s "Their Eyes Were Watching God" was all but forgotten, slipping out of print because of Wright's influence. However, somewhere around 1968 "Their Eyes.." began appearing in black bookstores across the country. What appealed to most Africian American women discovering "Their Eyes.." for the first time, was the compelling figure of the books heroine, Janie Crawford as a powerful, articulate, self-reliant, and radically different from any woman character in black literature. Here was a woman on a quest for her own identity, whose journey would take her, not away from, but deeper an