THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD by Zora Neale Hurston

Episode 8

For the first time in her life Janie has fallen in love and she tells her friend Phoeby that she is selling up the store and leaving Eatonville to "go and live in Tea Cake's way." But Tea Cake has no money and Janie is a wealthy widow some years his senior, so the tongues start to wag.

Read by Adjoa Andoh
Abridged and produced by Jane Marshall
A Jane Marshall production for BBC Radio 4

A 1930s African-American classic which tells Janie's story in dazzling Southern prose
This African-American classic was first published in the 1930s and is seen as one of the greatest American novels of the twentieth century. The author, Zora Neale Hurston, grew up in Eatonville, Florida, the first incorporated black town in America. Nearly every black woman writer of significance, including Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, acknowledges Zora Neale Hurston as her literary foremother.

"A rigorous, convincing and dazzling piece of prose, as emotionally satisfying as it is impressive." Zadie Smith. Show less