Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God

"And dey makes me tired. Always laughin!' When somebody talked mah husband intuh comin' down heah tuh open uh eatin' place Ah never dreamt so many different kins uh black folks could colleck in one place. Did Ah never woulda come. Ah ain't useter 'ssociatin' wid black folks. Mah son claims dey draws lightnin'." They laughed a little and after many of these talks, Mrs. Turner said, "Yo husband musta had plenty money when y'all got married."

Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God is the black feminist novel. Stories, plot devices, and themes from Zora's magnum opus appear in many more recent novels by black women, such as Edwidge Danticat, Toni Morrison, Alice, Walker, and others. Moreover, reading Their Eyes for the 2nd time makes me appreciate Zora's use of the black southern vernacular and the formal, 'standard' English through the Janie and the third person narrator. The novel is also interesting since it was rediscovered in the 1970s by black feminist writers after being despised by the predominantly black male critical establishment of literary criticism. Writers and philosophers such as Alain Locke believed Zora's masterpiece wasn't political enough and didnt directly address issues of the 'race' in a political way, which is complete bullshit. Hurston's novel cleverly critiques slavery, racism and sexism through Janie and her family, her grandmother Nanny being raped by her white slave master and her mother being raped by her schoolteacher. Hurston's novel was hated by the male-dominated literary world of the 1930s and 1940s because her story emphasizes female empowerment and independence from male sexual control, and its use of southern black vernacular, which some critics saw as supporting racial stereotypes of blacks.

In truth, Hurston's novel cleverly uses the black vernacular to accurately represent the speech of Floridians of African descent. Furthermore, her story's center is in the small town of Eatonville, an all-black town that Janie's 2nd husband, Joe Starks, establishes control over after leaving, is the same town Hurston had lived in. This all-black world, with no whites, allows Hurston to focus on how black men and women interact within their own sphere, albeit a sphere still subservient to whites who control Florida's government. In addition, the all-black town of Eatonville symbolizes black self-rule and self-sufficiency, with its own post office, a shop owned and operated by Starks and Janie (against her will), and the practice of black rural culture, such as playing the dozens. Her virtually all-black world where whites are only the backdrop of their lives, also relates to the fact that Hurston wrote the novel in 7 weeks while conducting research in Haiti for what would become her Tell My Horse. Haitian peasant culture, like African American rural culture, is also rich with oral traditions, and similar values and practices. As Hurston said in Tell My Horse, women in Haitian society were treated poorly by men, as if they were beasts of burden. The world Hurston takes the reader into in Florida is a similarly patriarchal society, where women were expected to cook and work for men. Janie, the heroine in this novel, must counter these patriarchal tendencies, causing her to rebel against her controlling first husbands, and losing her third husband after fleeing a hurricane in the Everglades, although Tea Cakes also tried to control her at times. Anywho, the image of Haiti likely influences the novel's black world, where blacks can establish their own towns, stores, post offices, and their own mayors/political leaders. Now I will compose a list of themes, literary devices, characters, and plots that owe something to Zora Neale Hurston's great novel.
1. Janie being the daughter of the rape of her mother appears in Edwidge Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory, whose protagonist is the daughter of her mother's rape in Haiti.
2. Toni Morrison's Beloved features Sethe's mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, who does deliver a humanizing sermon from the pulpit to the black peoples of the small Ohio town her family relocated to after fleeing Sweet Home. Janie's grandmother, Nanny, was never able to deliver her sermon on the mount, and due to her own hard life as a victim of rape and slavery, no longer believes in love. For Nanny, marriage is for protection and security, nothing more and nothing less. Women are to serve their husbands in exchange for protection.
3. Toni Morrison's Sula also features a character, Sula, who returns to her small town after traveling and living life as an independent woman. After Janie leaves Eatonville to marry Tea Cakes and make a life in another part of Florida, Janie later returns to the scorn and derision of the people. She is perceived as a troublesome woman for marrying a younger man, who had no money, justifying the town's beliefs that Janie should not marry for love and should have chosen a mate from an older, more professional pool of men. In Sula, Sula returns and sleeps with various men of the town. Both women do not follow the expected rules for female sexual behavior, and therefore become objects of scorn.
4. Toni Morrison's Tar Baby is a love story between Son, a lower-class black man, and Jadine, an educated black woman. Her relationship with Son has some similarities with Janie and Tea Cakes, since both men are fall for women with wealth, and survive a series of ordeals in their respective relationships. Of course, in Hurston's novel, Janie and Tea Cakes share a similar love for fun, merriment, etc. Son and Jadine cannot reconcile their vastly different African-American and European-American worldviews.

In summation, read this novel. I must also share a similar story from Haitian history that could've influenced Hurston's story of the dead mule, beloved by the town of Eatonville. After dying, the entire town (except Janie, who under orders from Joe, could not attend because of his bourgeois standards of proper womanhood) attends the pushing of the carcass out of town with much praise. In Haitian history, a president of peasant origin loved his goat so much that he ordered an elaborate Catholic funeral in the national cathedral in Port-au-Prince. The Haitian peasant's love and appreciation for animals could've impacted the funeral for the beloved mule of Eatonville. Once again, Zora's background in Haiti and her own experiences in entirely black towns with rich oral traditions and the belief in black self-sufficiency can be found throughout the novel. Moreover, the novel's use of 'formal' English for the 3rd person narration and the use of the black vernacular also represents the double consciousness of African Americans, and the double consciousness of Zora Neale Hurston herself, since she was both black and a woman. Hurston also highlights internal divisions among blacks besides gender and sexism, such as color prejudice among blacks. Indeed, Mrs. Turner, the light-skinned black women who hates blacks, takes a liking to Janie because of her light complexion and long hair. Janie, however, transcends color prejudice by marrying dark men and defending blacks in conversations with Turner. Turner is so delusional that she believes whites will accept light-skinned, biracial blacks if the darker ones weren't pulling the mulattoes down with them. I think it's obvious that Hurston's novel does address issues facing 'the race.' She highlights the importance of as well as race, in a clever novel that uses folklore, oral traditions such as the dozens, and Ebonics.

Zora Neale Hurston's Tell My Horse

"They say that the white man is coming to rule Haiti again. The black man is so cruel to his own, let the white man come!"

 Zora Neale Hurston's Tell My Horse is an interesting anthropological and religious study of Jamaican and Haitian cultures. Traveling in Jamaica and Haiti during the 1930s, Hurston's personal account reads like a travelogue and fascinating portrait of peasant cultures, religious traditions, and political conditions. Interesting sidenote, Alan Lomax was in Haiti making field recordings of Haitian music and actually recorded Zora Neale Hurston singing folk songs. Anywho, most of the book is centered on her descriptions of life, politics and religion in Haiti rather than Jamaica. Her time in Jamaica, however, does provide insight on race relations (black and mulatto divide in Jamaica exists just like in Haiti), belief in duppies in Jamaican culture, and traditions of Maroons in Accompong, including a dangerous hunt of a giant boar and the feasting that ensued. She also describes with numerous examples the color barrier between blacks and mulattoes in Jamaica, who form an elite separate from the black population because of access to knowledge, white contacts, and political power. Jamaica, like Haiti and other Caribbean islands, has a long history of political rule by mulattoes who usually carry on anti-black prejudice and rarely intermarry  with lower-class blacks. 

One of the great surprises one encounters reading the book is Hurston's ambivalence on the recently terminated American occupation of Haiti. As an African-American woman associated with the Harlem Renaissance one would expect her, like the NAACP and other black organizations, to unequivocally opposed to US imperialism in Haiti. A close reading of Hurston's text and her analysis of Haitian politics, however, reveals the deep political and economic troubles caused in Haiti by black and mulatto elites that created the conditions where American invasion was seen as preferable to the status quo. As Hurston traces the problems of Haiti back to the colonial period and the century and a half of misrule by black and mulatto elites, one must agree that a fundamental problem of Haitian politics is the use of lies and deception to justify the current status of Haiti. While talking to a Haitian intellectual, one sees it as he lies about Haitian history and overlooks Haiti's enormous structural problems that facilitated the American occupation. To this particular Haitian, lying about the actual events and problems of Haiti becomes truth as he lies to himself and to Zora Neale Hurston. 

Besides her ambivalence on the American occupation, Hurston's account focuses on Voodoo, its rituals, and the overwhelming majority of Haitians who practice the faith. Indeed, even light-skinned elites sometimes practice Voodoo, despite publicly distancing themselves from the "superstitions" of the blacks. Hurston's account of Voodoo actually accepts some of the 'supernatural' or unbelievable things associated with Voodoo, such as zombies. She even took a picture of a Zombie while in Haiti, a woman whose eyes appear dead. Thus, Hurston is not as skeptical of Voodoo and its power, so she succeeds in providing a relatively unbiased account of Voodoo rituals, beliefs, and practices. While discussing the practice of bokors who do specialize in turning victims into zombies with a Haitian doctor, they both concur that its probably caused by some drug crafted by African ancestors. Indeed, these secrets in composing drugs, remedies, and other poisons is part of secret societies, which are not 'real' Voodoo but a small sector of the Haitian populace who practice evil rites to turn their victims into human slaves (zombies), poison them, or even practice cannibalism. Hurston also describes the process of invoking the loas, the dances and music associated with calling the loas, and the 'mounting,' or act of possession by a loa. In addition, Hurston shares short descriptions of the most popular loas of the Petro and Rada rites of Vodou, the former belong to the Kongo tradition (central Africa) and the latter coming from Dahomey (West Africa). 

Overall, Hurston's Tell My Horse is a satisfactory account of Voodoo in Haiti. She dispels racist myths of Haitian voodoo as evil superstition, describing the real practices, origins, and theology of it. For Hurston, it is no better nor worse than any other religion. Her description of some of the flaws of Haiti and Jamaica regarding race and gender are also pertinent for understanding current social conditions of both islands and the Caribbean as a region. She does witness some amazing feats while in Jamaica or Haiti, or hears multiple accounts testifying to their validity, so it's hard to not believe that zombies, possession by loas, and the Ba Mouin rite are not 'real.' This text, loved and praised by Ishmael Reed, does live up to the hype as an important look on Vodou and African-derived religious systems, and highlights the already international black consciousness present in African-Americans during the Harlem Renaissance. Her experiences with Vodou/Voodoo testify to that fact, and illustrate the importance of Voodoo as a syncretistic way of life with potential healing through medicine and rituals.