The Wilsonian century Book

I read this masterpiece for the first time in high school. The love story of Janie and Tea Cake is one of stupendous beauty. Zora Neal Hurston's text is a treasure:
"So she went on thinking in soft, easy phrases while all around the house, the night time put on flesh and blackness."
Early in life, Janie is taken care of by her grandmother Nanny,
"Every tear you drop squeezes a cup uh blood outa mah heart"
As she grew, "Janie waited for a bloom time, a green time and an orange time."
She is married off to an old, rich man, but grows restless,
"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."
Ultimately , she gets an answer takes off with the ambitious Jody Starks. But, her hopes are shattered as Jody's ambitions in Eatonville, FL (coincidentally Hurston's hometown) where she feels,
"Four walls squeezing her breath out." as Jody ignores her and builds his empire in the town.
He passes away and Janie meets her true love Tea Cake and she seems to have found her inner peace:
"So she sat on the porch and watched the moon rise. Soon its amber fluid was drenching the earth, and quenching the thirst of the day."
Tea Cake gives her some lessons of wisdom:
"See dat? You'se got de world in uh jug and make out you don't know it. But Ah'm glad tuh be the one tuh tell yuh."
She sheds her reticences and fears in her love for him:
"He drifted off to sleep and Janie looked down on him and felt a soul-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place."
She never takes on any religion for:
"All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise, they would not be worshipped."
Her love is her temple as she dreamed of under the pear trees as a young girl with Nanny.
Disaster eventually strikes, as it always does, gods dispensing their unreasoning suffering.
"The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time. They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God."

This novel was a forgotten masterpiece published in 1935 but forgotten until Alice Walker rediscovered her - and her gravesite - in 1977. Since, it has been appreciated as the quiet, beautiful monument to a woman's strength and endurance. A must read in these times of women-hating rhetoric in Drumpf's amerikkka. The attacks on Planned Parenthood and the bullshit "reverse discrimination" are just two of the many demonstrations of why this book is important as both a feminist and anti-racist classic.

Their Eyes Were Watching God is one of the most beautifully evoked portraits of a woman of color that I have ever read.