Their Eyes Were Watching God

 Fiction by Zora Neale Hurston

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

At the beginning of the school year I saw that one of the high school classes was reading this; I realized that I'd never read it and reserved it at the library. Then when I got the book I found the dialect difficult to read. I remembered another dialect-heavy book that I'd read a while ago: The Girl with the Louding Voice. That one I had listened to on audiobook and hadn't even noticed the dialect until my sister-in-law pointed it out. So I figured I'd get this one on audiobook, and YAY! It was indeed more enjoyable that way.

All of that is a long way to say: I decided to read this book in August but didn't get it done until December.

This book was first published in 1937, but didn't get much recognition and went out of print. It was reissued in 1978 after Alice Walker was able to revive interest in the author, a "Harlem Renaissance" writer like the more well-known Langston Hughes.

The story is about a woman called Janie who dares to try to live as an independent woman in the 1930's, which earns her no admiration from anyone, unfortunately. By the end of the book I had really fallen in love with Janie and wanted to see her succeed, which was honestly pretty impossible for any woman in her time, let alone a black one. Still, this was a good book to listen to.