Jonah's Gourd Vine by Zora Neale Hurston (1934)

The first novel by the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, the story of a young man growing up to adulthood, but never fully reconciling himself.

Book Review: Jonah's Gourd Vine is just as good as Their Eyes Were Watching God, but is a smaller more focused story. While reading this wonderful novel, I felt as if I was sitting on the front steps, listening to the wisest woman on the block weave her stories of people she'd known long ago, staying up till late at night because I never wanted the words to end. As with Zadie Smith's writing, the characters come alive and the reader becomes fully invested, as if the people we meet are relatives or next door neighbors. In this book from 1934, Hurston says more about feminism, race in America, women and men, class, and poverty than any book written this year. She writes without self-pity and without defeat. Black people in Jonah's Gourd Vine are not less, incomplete, victimized, or somehow deprived versions of whites. They are whole, strong, determined, living full lives and confronting the world as they find it. Hurston is fully aware and writes of their reality, but for her white people are just another fact of life, like the weather, nature, fortune and misfortune. She has no time for hating or railing against the inequality she recognizes. Her characters are strong, intelligent, self-contained, they persevere, determined to carve their lives out of the wilderness. They are just as happy and realized as others; perhaps more so. This is a beautifully written book, poetry oozing between the words, lucky I get to see that world through other people's eyes. I'd never have known this was a first novel, it was so complete and rewarding. Only occasionally did I have the feeling that Hurston's field studies were being quoted at too great a length, but at the same time I enjoyed the idea of getting to see the results of her sociological and anthropological research. Don't forget that this is literature, with a fascinating readable surface, but with many thoughts and messages underneath. Readers could endlessly discuss what forces drive Lucy and John (the names of Hurston's parents), the role of religion, the strength and sorority of the women, the reality of hoodoo in the book, relations between classes and races. Jonah's Gourd Vine is as deep as the reader is willing to go (the Foreword by Rita Dove and Afterword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. are both well worth reading after you've read the novel -- you'll find they encapsulate many of your own ideas). The book was also a call to action for me: I want to: (1) learn more about Zora Neale Hurston's biography (she was forgotten for decades until Alice Walker published an article about her in 1975); (2) read her other two novels; (3) find more of her short stories (I read "Sweat," it was brilliant). This little review only scratches the surface. For me Hurston is now a must read. [4★]