Read ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ by Zora Neale Hurston

Florida has produced lots of first-rate crime fiction by authors like John D. MacDonald, Charles Willeford, Carl Hiaasen, Randy Wayne White, Elmore Leonard, Edna Buchanan and Tim Dorsey.

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For classic literature, though, the bucket list essential is Black feminist icon Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937 novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Set in Central Florida where the author grew up before relocating to Fort Pierce, where she died in 1960, it’s the poignant and evocative story of Janie Crawford’s search for identity. A proud, independent Black woman, Janie says she has done “two things everbody’s got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves.” Initially panned by male reviewers, the book was named one of the “100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present” in 2005 by Time magazine.