--- product_id: 240927966 title: "Their Eyes Were Watching God (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)" brand: "zora neale hurston" price: "₩114481" currency: KRW in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.kr/products/240927966-their-eyes-were-watching-god-harper-perennial-modern-classics store_origin: KR region: South Korea --- # 4.3/5 star rating from 16,604 reviews PBS Great American Read Top 100 Classic African-American literature Their Eyes Were Watching God (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) **Brand:** zora neale hurston **Price:** ₩114481 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Summary > 📖 Own the story that redefined Black female voices in literature! ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Their Eyes Were Watching God (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) by zora neale hurston - **How much does it cost?** ₩114481 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.kr](https://www.desertcart.kr/products/240927966-their-eyes-were-watching-god-harper-perennial-modern-classics) ## Best For - zora neale hurston enthusiasts ## Why This Product - Trusted zora neale hurston brand quality - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Key Features - • **Rich, Authentic Dialect:** Masterful use of Southern dialect that immerses readers in early 20th-century Black communities. - • **Enduring Cultural Impact:** Reissued after 30 years, now a cornerstone in literary and cultural heritage collections. - • **Award-Winning Recognition:** Featured in PBS Great American Read Top 100 picks, a must-have for cultural connoisseurs. - • **Timeless Literary Classic:** A seminal work that shaped African-American and feminist literature. - • **Complex, Empowered Protagonist:** Janie’s journey of self-discovery challenges societal norms and gender roles. ## Overview Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is a critically acclaimed novel celebrated for its lyrical storytelling and pioneering portrayal of a Black woman’s quest for identity and love in early 20th-century America. A PBS Great American Read Top 100 pick with over 16,000 reviews averaging 4.3 stars, this Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition revives a once out-of-print masterpiece that continues to inspire and challenge readers worldwide. ## Description A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick "A deeply soulful novel that comprehends love and cruelty, and separates the big people from the small of heart, without ever losing sympathy for those unfortunates who don't know how to live properly." --Zadie Smith One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston. Out of print for almost thirty years--due largely to initial audiences' rejection of its strong black female protagonist--Hurston's classic has since its 1978 reissue become perhaps the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Dimensions | 20.57 x 13.97 x 2.03 cm | | Isbn 10 | 0061120065 | | Isbn 13 | 978-0061120060 | | Item Weight | 1.05 kg | | Language | English | | Print Length | 264 pages | | Publication Date | 30 May 2006 | | Publisher | HarperCollins Publishers | ## Images ![Their Eyes Were Watching God (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71YvIyTP6fL.jpg) ![Their Eyes Were Watching God (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) - Image 2](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91NrVTtGSRL.jpg) ![Their Eyes Were Watching God (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) - Image 3](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/31N43lmUPJL.jpg) ![Their Eyes Were Watching God (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) - Image 4](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81S4yMz7GeL.jpg) ![Their Eyes Were Watching God (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) - Image 5](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/813p6mJNmSL.jpg) ## Available Options This product comes in different **Media Language, Media Format** options. ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A tide in the affairs of women... *by on Reviewed in the United Kingdom 15 January 2016* When Janie walks back into town eighteen months after leaving with a man 12 years her junior, her former friends and neighbours gossip and snigger, assuming he has spent all her money and then left her for a younger woman. But Janie's story is more complicated, a tragedy but also an awakening, her journey one of self-discovery.Janie is 16 when we first meet her in the care of her grandmother, a slave who became pregnant to her owner just before abolition. Janie's own birth was as a result of the rape of her mother by a teacher. The date isn't given, but a quick calculation suggests that the bulk of the book takes place in the first couple of decades of the 20th century. This matters, because one of my major criticisms of the book is that it seems to be set quite apart from historical context. There is no mention of WW1, no suggestion that any of the men fought or, indeed, had an opinion on the rights or wrongs of fighting for the USA. My (shallow) understanding is that this was a time of great change for African Americans, when they began to demand that a country that expected them to fight and die for it should also give them rights as equal citizens, develop a true democracy that embraced all people equally. But Janie's world indicates none of this, and I found myself therefore not being able to entirely accept it as a realistic picture of the time.Instead, Janie's contemporaries are shown as lazy, passive and unambitious on the whole, their aspirations beaten out of them by a world still run by and for the white elite. That I could accept more, though it seems in conflict with the idea of the development of the all-black town of Eatonville in which much of the story is placed. And Eatonville itself doesn't ring wholly true – when Janie and her new husband arrive there, it is no more than a plot of land with a few shacks, but within a few years it seems to be a thriving success story, without any indication of where that success comes from. And again, there is no discussion of politics or the wider world – Eatonville seems to exist in happy isolation, and the people Janie meets there and on her travels live carefree lives, based around drinking, gambling and sex – a happy-go-lucky existence, with no thought for the future. The position of women is one of almost total subservience to their men – a style of life where sexism and domestic violence is accepted by all. I was surprised at how negative a picture a black author was creating of the black community at a time when the political struggle for equality was building to a crescendo.The reason I bring up these criticisms first is that, after I finished the book, I read the forewords and afterword in my copy, written by Edwidge Danticat, Mary Helen Washington and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and was rather stunned to discover that my criticisms echoed those of the male black writing community of the time, whose dismissal of the book was based pretty much on it not conforming to the political agenda of the black movement. The subsequent feminist critiques of the '70s and later, it seems to me, dismiss these criticisms too easily, perhaps because they think that to accept them would weaken their own argument that the book is a seminal text in the finding of the black female voice in literature. I beg to disagree - with both parties: the lack of a political context is a weakness but not one that prevents the book from making an important contribution; and the fact that it gives women in black culture a voice does not negate the fact that it would have been a greater book had it addressed, or at least acknowledged, the contemporary political situation.Where the book excels is in its portrayal of Janie's character – her finding of her own way despite the male dominance of the society she lives in. As a person of mixed racial ancestry, Janie's light skin tone and unusual hair are used to great effect to show how indoctrinated the black psyche had become to accept the desirability of 'white' physical traits; showing within their community the same kind of prejudices heaped on them from outside it. Having been married off young to a much older man, Janie rebels and runs off with the good-looking and ambitious Joe to Eatonville, only to discover that Joe too believes that a woman is at her best in the kitchen and bedroom. We know from the beginning of the book that there is a third man in Janie's story – the younger Tea Cake, for whom she has left her comfortable home in Eatonville and gone off to work the fields in the Florida Everglades. It is in the few months that she spends with Tea Cake that Janie finally discovers what it is to love and be loved equally.Although the structure of the book is that Janie is telling her story in retrospect to her friend Pheoby, this is a third person narrative for the most part, slipping into first occasionally as we are made directly privy to Janie's thoughts. All of the speech is in dialect, which Hurston handles brilliantly, and although the non-dialogue parts are in a more standard form of English, she maintains speech patterns, tone and vocabulary throughout. The dialect is not so broad that it makes the book hard to read – it's sustained so beautifully that it almost recedes into the background after the reader gets tuned into it. While I have criticised the portrayal of the society as negative, it's also done with great skill, making it completely believable within the internal context of the book. The writing is lyrical at times, especially the section in the Florida Everglades where the land and weather come to play a huge part in the story. The book has its share of tragedy and horror, but Hurston offers compassion to her characters at all times, and she draws them subtly, so that there are few of them who can't earn our empathy.I am aware that this review has taken on gargantuan proportions, but that's a sign of the effect the book and the debate surrounding it had on me. I could write at length about my disappointment that fundamentally Janie's search for herself seems too much to be a search for a man who will love her right. I could mention my anger at the way Hurston seems tacitly to endorse wife-beating so long as it's done with love(!). I could wonder about the lack, not just of children, but of any mention of them. But instead, I'll say that, despite my quite severe criticisms of it, I loved the book for the language and the compelling story-telling, and for making me think, and it's one that I'm sure would deliver even more on a re-read. 4½ stars for me, so rounded up. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Thought-provoking and emotional *by on Reviewed in the United Kingdom 29 February 2020* Their Eyes Were Watching God is one of those books that you feel you ought to love because it occupies such an iconic position in 20th century literature. I can’t say I found it an easy read for the reasons I’ll set out shortly but I certainly admired it and felt more kindly towards the book in the second half.The main thing I found difficult about the book was that much of Janie’s story is rendered in vernacular. This does give it a fantastic sense of authenticity but, initially, I found it difficult to get to grips with and found myself having to re-read sentences to ensure I understood what was being said.Janie is a young woman who instinctively wants more from life (although she doesn’t know quite what) and snatches the opportunities that arise although more often than not, sadly, they don’t work out. A recurring theme of the book is the silencing of women, in particular by men but more generally by society. When Janie finally meets someone who seems to want her to be herself and not be constrained, it ends in tragedy.I did find it strange that at certain points in the book the author chooses to switch from Janie articulating her story directly to the third person. The Afterword included in my edition (an essay by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) describes this as the author shifting ‘back and forth between her “literate” narrator’s voice and a highly idiomatic black voice found in wonderful passages of free indirect discourse’. In one section, the book even switches to the point of view of Janie’s second husband, Jody. And towards the end of the book, when Janie is on trial accused of a serious crime, the reader doesn’t get to hear her defence in her own words.The author’s writing craft is demonstrated by some imaginative turns of phrase. For example, when Janie wakes up in time to see ‘the sun sending up spies ahead of him to mark out the road through the dark’ or, sitting on her porch one evening she watches the moon rise. ‘Soon its amber fluid was drenching the earth, and quenching the thirst of the day.’ And there is real drama created in the scenes set in the Everglades during which Janie, Tea Cake (her third husband) and others flee the flood water created by the passing hurricane. (It is during this section that the book’s title appears.) ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ fabulous, different *by on Reviewed in the United Kingdom 4 July 2023* Opens a window on a fascinating place and time in history I had known nothing about.Written in beautiful poetic prose and dialect, the latter hard going but so vivid that the characters come to life. ## Frequently Bought Together - Their Eyes Were Watching God - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - The Bluest Eye (Vintage International) --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.kr/products/240927966-their-eyes-were-watching-god-harper-perennial-modern-classics](https://www.desertcart.kr/products/240927966-their-eyes-were-watching-god-harper-perennial-modern-classics) --- *Product available on Desertcart South Korea* *Store origin: KR* *Last updated: 2026-11-04*