This book is definitely a little different from what I usually read and write about. For one, it’s from way back in the 1930s; for another, it’s literary fiction rather than my beloved science fiction and fantasy. It makes me laugh to describe literary works as unusual in my reading, because once upon a time, when I was a high school student, other kids in my classes commented about taking a look at what I was carrying around this week. I always had “one of The Classics” with me. One week, Dracula; the next, The Divine Comedy. Though, truly, dystopias like 1984, Brave New World, and We were high school me’s literary candy.So I guess I should probably be less surprised that I liked this book.I got into it after seeing it mentioned in How to Read Literature Like a Professor. Also, it was February, and Black History Month seemed like a good time to fill in gaps in my personal literary canon from not encountering books by Black authors nearly as much as I should have in high school and college.Their Eyes Were Watching God follows Janie, a Black woman in 1930s Florida, through different ages of her life as she learns who she is and what she wants to do. We follow her from the tutelage of her grandmother, through three different husbands. In each stage we see Janie fighting between a desire to please those she loves and a desire to take agency for herself and throw caution to the wind.A warning for those who dislike course language in their books, this book centers a Black protagonist in 1930s America. There are racial slurs in this book. A lot of them. Sometimes from Black characters to other Black characters. Other times directed by White characters at Black characters. Because that’s how language was used in the Jim Crow South. The dialect of the mostly Black Southern cast is also written phonetically, a choice that took me a chapter or so to really get, but added texture to the dialog.Speaking of language, Hurston can really turn phrases and metaphors. There are plant and tree references that go along with growing and changing all throughout the book. Nanny’s scars from growing up a slave are described as tree-like, the pastor that Janie is first married to is described as resembling branches without roots, Janie’s mother was even named Leafie.This book was a shorter, quicker read for me, but it was so dense and full of meanings and character. I’m really glad to have read it.Something to Take Away for Games or StoriesI think the reoccurring pear tree symbol is a good example here of how something can subtly and not-so-subtly come back again and again.So take something that makes sense to you to relate to a character and just drop it in here and there. Let it take on the meaning it needs to through how it gets interacted with in your games, or how readers interact with it in stories.Like how the tree symbol in Their Eyes Were Watching God can represent change, or growth, or progress, or sometimes the opposite when a tree represents something stable. Give the people you tell stories with something to latch on to and tell their own stories about.
