55 pages • 1 hour read
Zora Neale HurstonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a bildungsroman (or coming-of-age novel) that follows Janie’s development from teen to mature woman and raises significant issues related to the representation of African American women. Janie increasingly rejects the racial and gender norms of her community, chooses love over material prosperity, and seizes a freedom rarely achieved by any woman of the day, regardless of her race.
Her first marriage to Logan Killicks, a crude but relatively prosperous man, fulfills Nanny’s dream that Janie secure her future by marrying a property owner. For Nanny, a woman who has owned little—not even herself during her enslavement—the idea of property as security is irresistible. Nanny’s experiences include being sexually coerced by her enslaver and then threatened by his jealous wife, and seeing her daughter exhibit untreatable psychiatric symptoms after being raped. Nanny hence believes that love and desire are threats best neutralized by conventional morality. Through Nanny’s story, Hurston demonstrates the lasting and damaging impact of sexual exploitation on African American women, even after the arrival of freedom. Despite having escaped slavery, Nanny never feels secure enough to value love, romance, and the free play of sexual desire in the way Janie eventually embraces. Through Nanny, Hurston conveys how the double oppression of racism and misogyny affect Black women’s identity.
By Zora Neale Hurston
Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"
Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"
Zora Neale Hurston
Drenched in Light
Drenched in Light
Zora Neale Hurston
Dust Tracks on a Road
Dust Tracks on a Road
Zora Neale Hurston
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick
Zora Neale Hurston
How It Feels To Be Colored Me
How It Feels To Be Colored Me
Zora Neale Hurston
Jonah's Gourd Vine
Jonah's Gourd Vine
Zora Neale Hurston
Moses, Man of the Mountain
Moses, Man of the Mountain
Zora Neale Hurston
Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life
Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life
Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston
Mules and Men
Mules and Men
Zora Neale Hurston
Seraph on the Suwanee
Seraph on the Suwanee
Zora Neale Hurston
Spunk
Spunk
Zora Neale Hurston
Sweat
Sweat
Zora Neale Hurston
Tell My Horse
Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica
Zora Neale Hurston
The Eatonville Anthology
The Eatonville Anthology
Zora Neale Hurston
The Gilded Six-Bits
The Gilded Six-Bits
Zora Neale Hurston