Their Eyes Were Watching God

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."