Revisiting ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’

Summary

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Podcast Summary: NPR’s Book of the Day – Revisiting 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'

Date: November 29, 2025
Hosts: Andrew Limbong & BA Parker
Guests: R. Eric Thomas (writer & Chicago Tribune columnist), Tayari Jones (author)

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Episode Overview

This episode is a vibrant group reflection on Zora Neale Hurston’s classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, discussed as part of NPR’s “Books We’ve Loved” series. The hosts and their guests explore the enduring relevance of Hurston’s work, the craft of her storytelling, its fraught historical reception, and its profound legacy in Black literature and culture. The conversation is lively, personal, and peppered with humor, candid impressions, and thoughtful critique.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Personal Connections and First Encounters

• Hosts and guests reflect on first reading the novel—often as teens or young adults—and how impressions change upon rereading as adults.
  • R. Eric Thomas recounts first reading “Their Eyes” in high school, falling for its language and story so much that his AOL handle was “teacake8,” despite not agreeing with the character’s choices (04:12).
  • BA Parker highlights how the book resonated with her as a teen on her grandparents’ farm, signifying both hope and liberation (02:41).
  • Andrew Limbong describes his initial resistance to the novel (“it felt like a slog”), contrasted with his deeper appreciation and emotional openness on rereading as an adult (03:09).

2. The “Coming of Age” Frame—At Any Age

• Challenging the notion that coming-of-age stories belong to the young:
  • Parker frames Janie’s story as coming of age even though Janie is 36: “Coming of age shouldn’t belong to 18-year-olds… I also think 40-year-olds come of age. I’m rooting for the middle aged people right now.” (02:11-02:22)
  • The group celebrates the narrative of middle-aged self-discovery—“coming of middle age”—and how Hurston’s heroine finds agency and love later in life.

3. Zora Neale Hurston: The Woman Behind the Book

• Hurston’s craft, folklore, and legacy:
  • BA Parker details Hurston’s background—writing much of the book in Haiti in just seven weeks, grounding her narrative in Black folklore and oral tradition (07:21).
  • Hurston’s “anthropological” approach blends folk tradition into fiction; her use of dialect is seen as both authentic and innovative, despite later criticism (07:49, 19:13).
  • The panel discusses how, as a central but undervalued Harlem Renaissance figure, Hurston’s work was initially marginalized, selling only ~5,000 copies before fading into obscurity (08:51).

4. The Richard Wright Review and Literary Respectability

• Richard Wright’s negative review is given special attention:
  • Andrew reads aloud a scathing passage from Wright, accusing Hurston of pandering to a white audience and lacking substance:

    “The sensory sweep of her novel carries no theme, no message, no thought... her novel is not addressed to the Negro but to a white audience whose chauvinistic tastes she knows how to satisfy.” (10:05)

  • Parker and Eric critique this view as emblematic of respectability politics and gendered double standards faced by Black women writers (09:23, 09:45, 12:16).

5. Recovery and Enduring Legacy of the Novel

• The book’s return to prominence in the 1970s, thanks to Alice Walker’s campaign to recognize Hurston’s contributions, is marked as a turning point (11:01).
  • Parker:

    “Zora Neale Hurston essentially died in obscurity. And it wasn’t until Alice Walker... wrote about her pilgrimage to find Zora’s unmarked grave... in 1975 that gave her work a second life.” (11:01)

  • Eric Thomas adds:

    “We are only as great as a people, as a literary society, as all of our voices, as opposed to simply like the few that we select. So I’m very grateful to Alice Walker for bringing this book back.” (12:16)

6. Dialect, Authenticity, and the Value of Black Folklore

• Parker spotlights Hurston's use of “eye dialect,” defending it as both authentic and anthropologically rooted—rebutting Wright's criticism as “coming from inside the house” (13:19).
• Audio clip: Hurston herself describes her process of learning and preserving folk songs in her community (14:45–15:12), demonstrating her dedication to authentic representation.
  • Hurston:

    “I just get in the crowd with the people, and if they sing it… I keep on till I learn all the sounds and all the verses, and then I sing them back to the people...” (14:45)

7. Janie’s Marriages – Matryoshka Dolls of Liberation

• The group analyzes Janie’s three marriages as progressively deeper layers of agency and liberation:
  • Thomas:

    “I see the three husbands as this kind of matryushka doll of deeper levels of liberation... and then she finally gets back home and she’s only responsible to herself. That is true liberation.” (19:08–20:17)

  • Parker calls the outcome “wish fulfillment”—Janie finally lives and keeps her autonomy (18:30, 18:54).

8. On Empathy, Judgment, and Narrative Structure

• Eric Thomas describes the book’s challenge as expanding the reader’s empathy:

  • “One of the pristine challenges of this book is expanding your sense of empathy for this woman as a main character... [Hurston] begins the book with this sort of chorus of dissent, this spiteful tone as a way of counteracting our own judgment.” (23:23)

• Andrew Limbong:

  “That’s the trick of the book is, like, you’re at one end judging her at the beginning, and then you feel for her towards the end.” (24:20–25:12)

9. Why This Book Still Matters Today

• Thomas:

  “On a craft level, it’s extraordinary at the sentence level... at a larger plot level, it challenges us at every step, but also it embraces us, it welcomes us in... It gives us a crucial view of a part of American society... the literary canon [is] still having resonance to who we are today.” (26:11)

• Parker:

  “It is such... a delicious book that fits into a pocket of the canon that... isn’t too represented... Their Eyes Were Watching God feels miraculous. It still feels timely to me...” (26:50)

• Andrew notes how Hurston’s prose shifts between musical dialogue and lush, lyrical metaphor, creating the book’s “deliciousness” (27:38–28:26).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Eric Thomas, on identifying with Janie:

  “I identified with Janie like I was like a 16 year old cisgender boy. I was like, I am this 37 year old woman. I am searching for love and identity.” (00:00, repeated at 05:08)

• On the anti-respectability thrust:

  “I find having gone through some of [Wright’s] work before, there’s like a slight embarrassment... that’s loving white people too much. Sorry, Richard, sorry, you know, like, Zorich, wrong.” – R. Eric Thomas (16:08)

• Parker, on Hurston’s overlooked legacy:

  “The fact that these women are immediately put in the margins of their own cultural moment... Zora Neale Hurston essentially died in obscurity.” (11:01)

• Hurston herself, on collecting folklore:

  “And then I sing them back to the people until they tell me that I can sing them just like them. And then I carry my memory.” (15:12)

• Eric Thomas, on Hurston’s empathy challenge:

  “Zora Neale Hurston begins the book with this sort of chorus of dissent... as a way of, like, counteracting our own judgment. She’s like, you’re going to judge this person... Then immediately the next chapter, we’re brought into her inner circle.” (23:23)

• Parker, imagining Janie’s liberation:

  “Trying to think of other books where it’s like, sexually liberated woman who first off lives at the end... and gets like autonomy. In some ways this book feels like wish fulfillment.” (18:43–19:05)

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Extended Segment: Tayari Jones on Hurston’s Legacy (31:42–35:55)

• On Hurston’s influence on her writing about the South:

  “She is able to tell a universal story using a language very specific, not just to the south... but to her particular hometown. Like, just the way that she represents her home helped me in representing mine...” (32:14)

• On folklore and cultural memory:

  “Many of us turn to folklore. Like, we are now creating folklore, but we just don’t know it’s folklore yet... if people are still telling that story, if it has stood the test of time, it becomes folklore.” (33:47–35:25)

• If Hurston were alive today?

  “She led the culture. She didn’t follow the culture.” (36:21)

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Book Recommendations – "If You Like This, Read That" (28:55)

• R. Eric Thomas:
  • Getting Mother’s Body by Suzan-Lori Parks – for lyricism, Black sound/culture, and strong women.
• Andrew Limbong:
  • Tom Lake by Ann Patchett – about a woman recounting her complex love story, agency in the face of judgment.
• BA Parker:
  • Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel – about navigating stifling familial and societal expectations, magical realism, liberation.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Opening Personal Reflections: 00:00–05:08
• Summary & Framing as Coming-of-Age: 01:09–02:24
• First Encounters & Rereading: 03:09–04:08
• Hurston's Background: 07:21–08:51
• Richard Wright Review & Debate: 10:00–12:16
• Audio Clip—Hurston on Folklore: 14:45–15:12
• Analysis of Janie’s Marriages: 17:32–20:17
• Discussion of Empathy for Janie: 23:06–25:12
• Why Read Now/Book’s Craft: 26:05–28:37
• Book Recommendations: 28:55–31:07
• Tayari Jones Interview: 31:42–36:39

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Final Takeaways

• Their Eyes Were Watching God endures as a radical narrative of Black women’s agency, liberation, and voice, resonating for new generations.
• Hurston’s fusion of folklore, local dialect, and lyrical prose is both craft and cultural preservation.
• Revisiting the novel offers a timely mirror for contemporary conversations about respectability, judgment, and the richness of marginalized voices.

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This summary is intended for listeners who want an immersive yet concise guide to the key ideas, tonal moments, and intellectual currents of the episode.

Transcript

[R. Eric Thomas]

I identified with Janie like I was like a 16 year old cisgender boy. I was like, I am this 37 year old woman. I am searching for love and identity.

[Andrew Limbong]

You're listening to books we've loved from npr, the show where we reread old.

[BA Parker]

Favorites and tell you why they still matter today.

[Andrew Limbong]

I'm Andrew Limbong.

[BA Parker]

I'm BA Parker.

[Andrew Limbong]

What's up, Parker? You said that so like, you said that so sly.

[BA Parker]

Why? I don't know. I'm in a sly kind of mood.

[Tayari Jones]

I feel freaky.

[BA Parker]

I feel beautiful. This is what the book makes me feel.

[Andrew Limbong]

Yeah, that's what I was. Yeah, that's what I'm picking up. All right, I am very stoked to talk to you about this book. And with us today, we've got writer and Chicago Tribune columnist, R. Eric Thomas. What's up, man? How you doing?

[R. Eric Thomas]

Hi. I'm excited to be here.

[Andrew Limbong]

Are you also feeling sly and slinky?

[R. Eric Thomas]

I feel like my delivery was not very sly and slinky. I'll try again.

[BA Parker]

Hi.

[Andrew Limbong]

Ooh. All right, now we're getting it.

[BA Parker]

Okay, folks, we are reading Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.

[Andrew Limbong]

All right, let's go, let's go, let's go.

[BA Parker]

Thank you. Let's go. Okay. Okay. Now let's get into the summary. First published in 1937, their eyes are Watching God is a coming of age story of Janie who goes through a series of marriages, but. But ultimately discovers who she is in Southern Florida. And like, I don't wanna give too much away, but I also feel like it's one of those books where I think you just need to savor it.

[Andrew Limbong]

Yeah, I mean, the book is kind of structured around those three marriages. Right. First to a guy named Killiks, then to a more ambitious man named Jodie, and then to Tea Cake, who's young and hot. But I think it's fair to say he's a bit of a. I don't know, he's not the most responsible man. Right. Which I guess it's a good time to say we're gonna be talking about sex and sexual assault and gun violence. But, Parker, I'm interested in your framing this as a coming of age book, because in the book it's a big deal that she's 36. Right.

[BA Parker]

But, like, she starts off super young. Like, it's a framed narrative. She's like coming of age.

[Andrew Limbong]

Like coming of age shouldn't belong to 18 year olds.

[BA Parker]

I also think 40 year olds come.

[R. Eric Thomas]

Of age yeah, well, coming of middle.

[BA Parker]

Age, I'm rooting for the middle aged people right now.

[Andrew Limbong]

Listen, it's happening, right? It's happening.

[BA Parker]

I'm advocating for those ladies who are like, you know what, maybe we need like a 25 year old man to feel alive.

[Andrew Limbong]

Yeah. All right, so is that why you picked this book? That's because of your party platform?

[BA Parker]

No.

[Andrew Limbong]

Your pro cougar platform?

[BA Parker]

Calm down, calm down. No. I loved this book. When I was a teenager, every summer I would be on my grandparents farm in North Carolina and I'd really just be in the feelings of that era. And it also seemed hopeful as like a young person. I mean, she goes through a lot of trials and tribulations, but there's like a liberation to it. And now that I'm reading it as an adult, it's still really liberating. How do you feel, Andrew?

[Andrew Limbong]

I read this book. I was an adult. I was like a grown working person. And I read it because I knew it was like an important book, right? And I knew it was like a gap in my reading history. I was like, all right, I should get around to reading it. And I remember I didn't like it when I first read it, Andrew. I was like literally rereading like some of like the notes in my book because I was treating it like homework and it felt like I was trying to analyze like the dialogue and the history and it felt like a slog to get through. Upon rereading it this time, I was much more open to falling in and out of love with Janie. Much more reading it as a sensory experience. So yeah, I really appreciate giving it a second crack, I think, Andrew, every.

[BA Parker]

Time I picture you reading a book, I picture you in a bar smoking a cigarette, being real judgy.

[Andrew Limbong]

Yeah, I mean, I think so. I remember I imagined myself on my porch in Baltimore, probably reading this, shooting, blasting a dart, being like, hmm, I don't know about this.

[BA Parker]

Okay, so Eric, what is your relationship to the book?

[R. Eric Thomas]

I'm sorry, I'm just so stuck on this image of you, like smoking on a porch in Baltimore, being like janie girl.

[BA Parker]

I don't know if Jodie's the one. Free yourself.

[Andrew Limbong]

I was also like rolling my own back then too. So it's very like, you know, in tune.

[BA Parker]

So cultured.

[R. Eric Thomas]

Ghost of Zora is both judging and loving this. I'm sure celebrating my history also started in Baltimore. I was a high school student in Baltimore county and we read it in maybe 10th grade, 9th grade English class and I fell completely in love with it. I was in love with the language. I was in love with the story. So much so that I changed my first AOL instant messenger name was like teacake8 as if there were like other tea cakes.

[BA Parker]

To be fair, he did eat. So like I love. Okay you know I love this.

[Andrew Limbong]

That's also your like handle on DraftKings right now because lump gambling and like.

[R. Eric Thomas]

I look back and I think even then I was like tea cake. I don't agree with most of the decisions that he made in this book. And then when I read it like three years later at Columbia, I was like yo, I'm judging him. We should cancel tea cake. And I realize now looking back, I identified with Janie like I was like a 16 year old cisgender boy. I was like I am this 37 year old woman. I am searching for love and identity. Which is wild cause Janie is framed by her neighbors and her haters as like a Jesuit oldest woman who has ever lived and how dare she pursue love or personhood. So I don't quite know what I saw in Janie other than somebody who was trapped in a circumstance that did not meet her internal desire. And I loved that.

[BA Parker]

After the break, we will have more Their Eyes Were Watching God and its author, Zora Neale Hurston. Stay with us.

[Andrew Limbong]

Foreign.

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[BA Parker]

Before the break, we talked about our personal connections to Their Eyes Were Watching God. But I'd like to zoom out and talk about the myth, the legend miss Zora Neale Hurston now, she grew up in Florida, in Eatonville, one of the towns in their Eyes are watching God. And for the bulk of her writing this book, she was in Haiti for, like, in the span of seven weeks.

[Andrew Limbong]

She was rising and grinding. She had work to do.

[BA Parker]

She was rising, grind. And like Zora had once said that she felt pressure to get this book finished and wanted to rewrite it, but eventually felt that the final result captured her passion in the moment. I think you can feel that. I feel like Zora was an anthropologist and much of her storytelling was based in black folklore, including American and Caribbean. And I feel like that speaks to her fiction as well. Digging in the heart of it and the fact that Janie is kind of expressing herself in these interesting ways in the book. And you need to set aside the fact that Zora was a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance, how everyone knows her, including figures like, you know, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Nella Larson. But the book only sold about 5,000 copies during its initial run due to some bad reviews. At the time, they were hating haters to the nth degree.

[R. Eric Thomas]

And let me just say so one of those bad reviews was from Richard Wright, and it essentially killed this book. And if I ever see Richard Wright, it's on site.

[BA Parker]

It's on site.

[R. Eric Thomas]

On site. I love the work that he's done, but there is such beef. I also feel like Zora's legacy is one that is complicated. She had sharp elbows, which I don't think is a fault. She would later go on. No, of course. Yeah. But Richard Wright really undercut a beautiful and worthy novel because it didn't match up with the image. I think that he believed that should be put forth by black people. He was against the dialect. He was against the folkiness of it. But without cultural anthropologists like Zora Neale Hurston working in this form, we would lose this history. We would not be exposed to these people.

[BA Parker]

But I also think it's so ironic because the does comment on the dangers of respectability, politics, and of colorism and all of these isms that are the bread and butter of the black community at that time.

[Andrew Limbong]

Yeah, just so, listeners, I've got the Richard Wright review pulled up in front of me.

[BA Parker]

Read it, Andrew.

[Andrew Limbong]

There's a couple interesting lines. It's one of those reviews where he's reviewing two books. So he's also reviewing these Low Grounds by Walter Edward Turpin. And it's interesting how he doesn't like either book. So he's just straight up hating. But towards the end, he writes. Turpin's faults as a writer are those of an honest man trying desperately to say something. But Zora Neale Hurston lacks even that excuse. The sensory sweep of her novel carries no theme, no message, no thought. In the main, her novel is not addressed to the Negro, but to a white audience whose chauvinistic tastes she knows how to satisfy. That's crazy. Like, you cannot. Like, you cannot like this book. You cannot like this book. And it's fine. Right? I was mid on it when I read it. But to say that Terpin was a man who was trying to say something but failed in doing it, and Hurston has nothing to say, is vapid and empty and is trying to please white people. You gotta be like, what's the difference here?

[BA Parker]

You know, there is just such a willful ignorance towards trying to even attempt to understand where she's coming from, which I find frustrating, but also apt of its time. I mean, the fact that, like even the Harlem Renaissance as we know it, its origins come from a book party for a female author. I think it was Jessie Fawcett's. There Is Confusion was the name of the book, and there was an opening for her book, but no one properly remembers that. They remember all of the men who were coming out that time as well. The fact that these women are immediately put in the margins of their own cultural moment is Zora Neale Hurston essentially died in obscurity. And it wasn't until Alice Walker, blessed to her, wrote about her pilgrimage to find Zora's unmarked grave in Florida for Ms. Magazine in 1975. And that gave her work a second life. So, I mean, I feel fortunate. Like, in my lifetime, I never knew that Zora Neale Hurston had been in obscurity because her books were everywhere in my life growing up.

[R. Eric Thomas]

Yeah. It's also just unfortunate that there's this crabs in the barrel mentality which I think pervades a lot of marginalized communities, but that these male writers would see this door opening up for them and very quickly just shut it on Jesse Fawcett on Zona Hurston, on basically any female voice. And if there is a lesson to be taken from it, it's that, one, rising tides lifts all ships, but two, that we are only as great as a people, as a literary society, as all of our voices, as opposed to simply like the few that we select. So I'm very grateful to Alice Walker for bringing this book back.

[BA Parker]

Thank you.

[Andrew Limbong]

I think I'm interested in this criticism that, like you are writing for white people. Like, listen, catch me in a bar talking about certain writers, I'll probably throw that around, right? You know what I mean?

[R. Eric Thomas]

Facts.

[Andrew Limbong]

Upon reflection, upon a more sober moment, I'd be like, is that fair? Like, what does that mean?

[BA Parker]

I think it's the fact that the book uses a lot of eye dialect. And I feel like it was during a time when using that kind of dialect felt like minstrelsy. And they'll be like, is it authentic then? But, like, if Zora is a part of that community, if Zora is, like, collecting their stories and their legacies and their voices because she had recordings of herself and of those around her, it's true to herself. So I think there's such a threat to respectability politics at that time. It is something where you can't have it both ways. You can't wanna be respectable for white people and then critique someone unwarranted and be like, well, you're performing for white audiences. And I'm like, richard Wright, the call is coming from inside the house. I do wanna, like, pause for a second because we have, like, this rich audio that I want us all to hear, because Zora was this anthropologist who would into, like, the woods of Florida and get these voices. And yeah, just think that it would be, like, really nice to show some of the aspects of, like, what she was bringing to the table that I don't think her critics fully appreciated.

[Zora Neale Hurston (audio clip)]

I just get in the crowd with the people, and if they sing it and I listen as best I can and I start to join in with a phrase that. And then finally I get so I can sing a verse, and then I keep on till I learn all the sounds and all the verses, and then I sing them back to the people until they tell me that I can sing them just like them. And then I take part and I try it out on different people who already know the song until they are quite satisfied that I know it. And then I carry my memory.

[Andrew Limbong]

I like that clip because it, like, just reinforces while we were still talking about the dialogue. It's like she was big on repetition and repeating, like, folk songs back to people. Just be like, am I getting this right? Do I have this right? Da, da, da. And so my feelings about, like, authenticity and whether or not that should even be a barometer for, like, whether or not a book is good aside, it's like, it's pretty clear that the musicality of the dialogue portions of this book are authentic. It's like, Richard Wright, this is just how people talk. I don't understand what your beef is.

[R. Eric Thomas]

Yeah, yeah.

[BA Parker]

But it's, it's also, I think Zora shows a level of respect for the culture, for the people, but it also like to like circling back to that point. It's the fact that it exists, that it embarrasses Richard Wright and that's why he wants to denigrate it. I find having gone through some of his work before, there's like a slight embarrassment.

[R. Eric Thomas]

Right. Well, because, but that's, I mean that's, that's loving white people too much. You know, like, sorry, Richard, sorry. You know, like Zorich. Wrong.

[Andrew Limbong]

We're gonna take a quick break right there and then when we get back, we're just gonna dig into this book a little bit more. Dig into the meat and bones of this book. We'll be right back.

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[Andrew Limbong]

And we are back. All right, like I mentioned at the top, this whole book is structured essentially around three marriages. Right. And I did feel by like the middle of Jody. Right. When Jody. So Jody is the middle husband, he takes Janie and he ends up being like a mayor of like a small town.

[BA Parker]

Right, Right. So Janie's first husband is this much older man named Killix whom she doesn't love and he don't love her. And then she runs off with Joe or Jody as she calls him, whom she thinks she loves and they run.

[Andrew Limbong]

They run a general store. He gets sick, gets into some like maha agenda and refuses to take any medicine. Right. There is a moment where it's like knowing because the back flap tells me that there's a third husband on the way. It's like, there's a lot of husbanding going on here, dude, but what else.

[BA Parker]

Is she gonna do?

[Andrew Limbong]

It's like boom, boom, boom.

[BA Parker]

Which is kind of why, like, the ending is a best case scenario.

[Andrew Limbong]

It's a best case scenario.

[BA Parker]

She ends up alone. But she had for a brief moment in time this great love, which at that time, especially in that kind of book, to get. That was a lot.

[R. Eric Thomas]

Yeah.

[BA Parker]

Again, like, trying to think of other books where it's like, sexually liberated woman who first off lives at the end.

[Andrew Limbong]

Yeah.

[BA Parker]

But, like, keeps her money basically and gets like autonomy. Like, in some ways this book feels like wish fulfillment.

[R. Eric Thomas]

Yeah.

[BA Parker]

In that regard, it's kind of the.

[R. Eric Thomas]

Anti Hedda Gabler, but like, she has to do the same amount of fighting to get of this trap of womanhood in this time. And so I feel like I see the three husbands as this kind of matryushka doll of deeper levels of liberation. You know, like deciding that she didn't want to be with Logan Killiks, her first husband, is transgressive all on its own. And then, like, trying to express some autonomy with Jodie, who is, you know, very interested in just having like a dutiful wife who works in the back of the store and doesn't speak up. And that is transgressive. And like navigating her own finances is transgressive. And then sexual liberation, finding with Tea Cake a relationship that spoke to her body and to her wants and also challenged her to ask for what she wanted. And also think of herself as a financially liberated person responsible for her own money. I think that's just a whole nother level. And then she finally gets back home and she's only responsible to herself. And that is true liberation.

[Tayari Jones]

Yeah.

[BA Parker]

She don't have to cook for nobody but herself. She don't have to do any other thing. I think this is growth on my part. Remember as a kid hearing. Remember in the book she calls being with Tea Cake a self crushing love. And as a teenager being like, oh, that's so beautiful.

[Andrew Limbong]

And now I'm like, and now if your friend came out to be like, I met this 25 year old, we're hitting it off. He wants to take me to a farm in Florida. We're picking up and moving. Are you gonna say, hell yeah, dude, go for it.

[BA Parker]

You know what? If you like it, I love it. Times are hard.

[Andrew Limbong]

There is a part, though, I feel like towards the end of the book, I guess, spoilers for this Book. So spoiler, spoiler. There's a flood, and Janie gets swept up in the water, and there's, like, a dog coming attacker. And TK Comes in and rescues Janie, but not before being bit himself. He gets rabies, and then he starts acting crazy towards her, and Janie ends up having to kill him, where it's like when he starts sweating in bed, and he's jealous that she can't sleep in the bed with him because that's what the doctor said. We're really putting her through the wringer here, dude. And there's a little bit of exhaustion of, like, she's going through quite a bit in her 36 years in life.

[BA Parker]

I mean, this is also a side note, but I believe that Zora Neale Hurston was writing this after a breakup.

[Andrew Limbong]

And she's putting it all out there. Yeah.

[BA Parker]

Was inspired by her man at the time that they broke up. I think that's kind of beautiful, the fact that she created, like, this great love for this character. Shorty tried to stamp down who Janie was for years because she wanted to be independent. She wanted to be liberated. So the cost of coming out of her show was a couple hundred dollars.

[Andrew Limbong]

Make it work. You can make it. You can land this plane.

[BA Parker]

It's a gambling problem.

[Andrew Limbong]

We all have our faults, I suppose. Yeah.

[R. Eric Thomas]

You know, I wrote a daily advice column, and so once a day, I write to somebody, you should all just talk to each other. And that is my biggest concern with Tea Keg. Please, just talk to her. Treat her like, you know, treat her like the intelligent, independent, autonomous being that you know her to be. And I think the stealing of the money or the borrowing of the money by procuring is such a moment of such basic behavior from an extraordinary man, you know, And I think that's why he gets rabies.

[BA Parker]

Okay, I want to ask. So the book begins and ends with a jury, and she's telling it to a friend. And how the audience can judge her but have a deep well of empathy for Janie. Do we have enough empathy for Janie?

[R. Eric Thomas]

I would argue that one of the pristine challenges of this book is expanding your sense of empathy for this woman as main character. I think Zora Neale Hurston begins the book with this sort of chorus of dissent, this sort of spiteful tone as a way of, like, counteracting our own judgment. She's like, you're going to judge this person. You're going to think that she makes the wrong choices. And let me tell you, narratively, you're not on the inside. You know, we start off part of the chorus, we're looking at her, and then immediately the next chapter, we're brought into her inner circle. And I think what she's doing at the, like, textual level, but also at the sort of meta level is challenging both the reader in this time and the reader in our time to accept every single thing that Janie does as valid and as worthy of our empathy.

[Andrew Limbong]

There's, like, a lot of inviting you to judge her, right? Because there's a lot of especially, like, prejudging her, right? Because there's the reason why she can't connect to the town, like, since the beginning, right? Is because the town thinks, like, the way she looks, right? And they're like, oh, you're snooty. You're just not going to be one of us. You're going to be like some other thing. And I think what she's doing is, like, inviting you to do that, to just, like, judge her a little bit. And then I know we've been joking about how her bad romantic decisions, right, and stuff like that, but to a certain extent, you do see what she's trying to do. You do feel this movement of, especially towards the end, you know, with tk, it's like she's finally in love and doesn't care about the judgment that happens. You know what I mean? And I think that's, like, the trick of the book is, like, you're at one end judging her at the beginning, and then you feel for her towards the end.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Yeah.

[BA Parker]

We're gonna take one more break, but when we're back, we will answer why Their Eyes Were Watching God should still be read today.

[Sponsor Announcer]

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[Andrew Limbong]

All right, we are back. Why do we think this book should be read today? Eric, you want to go first?

[R. Eric Thomas]

Yeah. I think on a craft level, it's extraordinary at the sentence level, at the level of curiosity about a particular culture, and then at a larger plot level, it challenges us at every step, but also it embraces us, it welcomes us in. This book is an invitation, and it gives us a Crucial view of a part of American society, a part of American culture that I don't think we see overrepresented in the literary canon while still having resonance to who we are today.

[BA Parker]

Yeah, I just think it is such. I hate when people say, like, a book is delicious, but I find it to be such a delicious book that fits into a pocket of the canon that I think Eric says is underrepresented, like, isn't too represented. And I think we're having conversations now about black female literature, that there is this very narrow realm of, like, where black female literature fits and, like, what bubbles up into the mainstream. What we have discussions about and Their Eyes Were Watching God feels miraculous. It still feels timely to me in a way that some of the literature that we've read this season has not.

[Andrew Limbong]

I think something that we didn't quite touch on. But is that, like. Yes, the dialogue is very ear specific and very musical and lyrical. The stuff in between, it's interesting. She shifts in the prose parts into this gear where she, as a writer, just starts cooking. Right. And you could argue, I think at times it veers into maybe a bit, like, too flowery. But I think there's, like, some genuinely beautiful sentences in between the dialogue. And I think that going back and forth is hitting at the story from multiple angles.

[R. Eric Thomas]

Right.

[Andrew Limbong]

And I think, Parker, that's like. That creates that deliciousness that you're sensing. Right, because you see them talking, and then it goes into this, like, metaphorical language about, like, bees or like honey or. You know what I mean? Like, all of that stuff.

[BA Parker]

Oh, yeah.

[Andrew Limbong]

And then it goes back into them talking. And so you're constantly going between the metaphorical and the literal in an interesting way. And so I think on a craft level alone, that's what this book is worth revisiting.

[BA Parker]

Make the kids read Their Eyes Are Watching God. Okay, now we're gonna pivot to a thing we call, if you like this, read that. If you don't like this, try that. We're gonna do some book recommendations. Eric, since you're our guest, what book would you recommend?

[R. Eric Thomas]

If you like this book? I highly recommend Susan Laurie Parks's 2003 novel, Getting Mother's Body. Susan Laurie Parks, Right. A banger. A banger of a book. It's a sort of riff, a light riff on as LA dying. And it's set in 1963 and follows this family that has to go retrieve their mother's body after the body is buried, is sold, and being dug up. It has the same level of lyricism and the same love of black folk, black culture, black sound, and black womanhood that their eyes were watching God has.

[Andrew Limbong]

I think my recommendation would be Tom Lake by Ann Patchett. I think if we're talking about a woman who is, like, telling her story. Right. Of we can call it sexual liberation in the face of judgment. Right. It's about a woman telling her daughters the story about how she hooked up with, like, a scummy dude while they were producing Our Town, which is another play about, like, a small town in judgment. And so, like, it's a really interesting parallel look at what it means to tell your story and to tell other people, listen, here's what happened. Here's what I did. Was I wrong? Maybe. Judge me if you like, but that's my story.

[BA Parker]

Ooh. Okay. These are excellent picks. So I leaned more into the stifleness of respectability and societal and familial expectations. So I went with Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel.

[Andrew Limbong]

Okay.

[BA Parker]

Cause it focuses on, like, a magical realism, but there is, like, a woman, the youngest isn't allowed to marry, but she still has love, and the whole family puts all their expectations on her. And I remember reading it years ago and also having that feeling of just let her be free. It's not coming of age, but it is finding oneself through that very narrow cultural expectation lens.

[Andrew Limbong]

You know, I read this in school, and I remember not liking it, but maybe I'll give it another shot.

[Tayari Jones]

Oh, no.

[BA Parker]

People are real hostile towards this book, and I understand why. Men in it are not great, but also the men in their eyes are watching. God, half of them, they're not great either. Eric Thomas. Eric. Eric. Oh, Baltimore accent. Calm down, Eric Thomas.

[Andrew Limbong]

This is when it's appropriate.

[R. Eric Thomas]

I welcome it. I welcome it.

[BA Parker]

Eric Thomas, thank you so much for.

[Andrew Limbong]

Being on the show today. Thank you.

[R. Eric Thomas]

This was so fun.

[BA Parker]

And on this segment of Phone a Fan, I called up author Tayari Jones about her love of Zora Neale Hurston. Hi, Jari.

[Tayari Jones]

Hi. Thanks for having me.

[BA Parker]

It's my pleasure. Are you kidding me? So you wrote the 2019 foreword to a collection of Hurston's work, Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick?

[Tayari Jones]

Yes.

[BA Parker]

How did you see Hurston's legacy reflected in your own storytelling, particularly in how you write about the south in complex female characters?

[Tayari Jones]

Well, one thing I will say that Hurston indeed demonstrates to us how to hit a straight lick with a crooked stick. And I don't know if people even still use that expression, but it's something that I Grew up hearing, which means, you know, what. How it's like, how you get to be a trickster, how you get to go the straight route you want to take, even though the system might be a little crooked, but you still get where you're going. And I think that that is part of what Hurston gives us. Like, she is able to tell a universal story using a language very specific, not just to the south, not just to Florida, but to her particular hometown. Like, just the way that she represents her home helped me in representing mine, because when I was coming up as a writer, you know, I moved to New York because that's where the business was, that's where publishing was. And I realized that I didn't have to run away from home to write about home. That writing about Atlanta, where I grew up, that is, in fact, an American story.

[BA Parker]

Oh, don't let my mama hear this. Because she would have been like, why did you move to New York? You could have stayed in Baltimore to talk about your family. So Hurston often looked to folklore to preserve cultural memory. Do you see any modern equivalent in today's literature or in your own work that serves that same purpose?

[Tayari Jones]

We kind of. Many of us turn to folklore. Like, we are now creating folklore, but we just don't know it's folklore yet. It's almost like after. It has to be, a certain amount of time has elapsed for when something goes from being said urban legend to folklore. But. And so I think that I don't know how much people are really leaning on the folklore exactly the way Hurston did. But, like, if you look at Dolan Perkins Valdez, she, like, in her book Take My Hand, I mean, she's looking at the recent past and the way that we tell ourselves the stories of our recent past. But even in her debut Winch, you know, she was making into modern fiction the stories we had heard about and passed down about, you know, the way that women. Women's lives were during enslavement. But I was at Spelman's homecoming this weekend. I've been out of college.

[BA Parker]

Hello.

[Tayari Jones]

It's my 30th anniversary at Spelman coming up. And they were playing all this old school hip hop, and I was, like, thinking, wow, is this folklore? Like, is rappers to light? Is that folklore? Oh. Cause that's full of stories true.

[BA Parker]

And they are.

[Tayari Jones]

They're spinating. Okay. Like, you think about, like, that kind of narrative hip hop, like in Rappers Delight, when he's talking about, have you ever been over a friend's house to Eat and the food just ain't no good, you know, goes over there. That. That would be a folkloric story.

[BA Parker]

Oh, I guess I never considered it. Like, at a certain point, the tales that we told before now in modern times becomes folklore.

[Tayari Jones]

Yes. All right. It has to age. You just gotta let it age. And if people are still telling that story, if it has stood the test of time, it becomes folklore.

[BA Parker]

I have never thought of it that way, and now I'm looking at everything differently. Oh, wow. Okay. So if Zora Neale Hurston were alive today, which I know it's like we always say, like, I have these, like, heady questions, but what conversations do you think she'd be leading about art and race and womanhood?

[Tayari Jones]

I think if Hurston were alive today, one, she would drive us crazy because she's. Hearst was kind of a contrarian. Like, it's so interesting how people are always. Because, you know, people ask me a lot about Hurston, particularly in February, and they're like, oh, I think, like, someone was saying, oh, I think Hurston would love Beyonce. And I'm like, no, she wouldn't throw hers and didn't like anything that's popular.

[NPR Announcer]

Oh.

[Tayari Jones]

Like, her whole way of understanding her role in the artistic landscape was to champion the underdog. So whatever Zora Neale Hurston would like, we would be probably like, I don't know, girl. I guess, like, she really, you know, she led the culture. She didn't follow the culture.

[BA Parker]

I know that's right. That's a perfect way to end this. Thank you so much.

[Tayari Jones]

This has been a pleasure.

[BA Parker]

And be sure to pick up Tiari's most recent novel, An American Marriage. But she's got a new book coming out called Kin, coming out in March of 2026.

[Andrew Limbong]

This episode was produced by Cher Vincent and edited by Megan Sullivan.

[BA Parker]

Engineering support by Robert Rodriguez. And our executive producer is Yolanda Sangweni.

[Andrew Limbong]

Thank you for listening to to books we've loved from npr. We'll see you next time.

[BA Parker]

Bye.

[NPR Announcer]

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