Zora Neale Hurston: Their Eyes Were Watching God

This is what Toni Morrison would like to write when she grows up. It has all the rich characterization and colloquial creativity of Beloved or Song of Solomon, but--will wonders never cease--with thematic continuity. One would think, with Hurston's background in antrhopology, that it would be she who errs on the side of interesting, but disjointed, ethnic folk-tale. Not so. Regardless of the turns the novel takes, she keeps one finger pressed on the heart of Janie's quest.

It is this quest which gives this novel its soul. Janie "had found a jewel down inside herself and she had wanted to walk where people could see her and gleam it around" (90). I can think of no embellishment that would make this a better mission in life, except perhaps to say that the jewel at each of our centers could also use polishing on occassion.

The chief scholarly curiosity of Hurston's work lies in its ill-reception during her life. Modern theorists decry Langston Hughes and his cadre of so-called progressive black intellectuals, but I can see their point. Hurston is (I decline to write 'was', for she is more alive today than many with whom I have daily contact) a woman out of her time, and as such she certainly had no place in their Harlem Reidentification. She did not belong in the 20's, and if I had my druthers I would resurrect her and watch gleefully as she snatches Tyra Banks' weave off of her insincere head, and tells Maya Angelou to lighten up, for God's sake.