Books with author Zora Neale Hurston

This is a classic of black literature which recounts the story of Janie Crawford's evolving selfhood through three marriages. Fair-skinned, long haired, dreamy as a child, Janie grows up expecting better treatment than she gets until she meets Tea Cake, a younger man who engages her heart and spirit. Janie does not have to live lost in sorrow, bitterness, fear or foolish romantic dreams, for Janie and the reader have leraned "two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves."

“Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.”—Ch. 20.In the beginning, there was Nanny. Nanny knew what it meant to be a slave to men. And Nanny had a daughter. She saw what happened to her, how she chose to escape pain in oblivion. And Nanny was scared. She was so scared that she wanted to prevent the same thing from happening to her daughter’s daughter, even if it meant that she had to force her grandchild to be unhappy. As long as she was unhappy in a different, secure way, with an old and stable man by her side.That is the background of Janie Crawford’s story. She is in her early forties, and starts telling a friend her life story in beautiful, colloquial language. And what a life it is! So common and typical, and yet individually painful and loving.—Lisa @ Goodreads.com.