"How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company?"

This audiobook version of "Their Eyes Were Watching God"  is superlatively good. Just amazing.

I had wanted to read "Their Eyes" after listening to an essay by Zadie Smith in her collection "Changing My Mind." In this essay, Smith writes about the universal literary tradition vs. the particularity of blackness--of female blackness. In sum, "It is not the Black Female Literary Tradition that makes Hurston great. It is Hurston herself."

I'm reminded of several things:

One, in my American literature class at community college we read "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison. A classmate (white, sheltered) began wondering out loud whether or not black people were too invested in feeling sorry for themselves. The professor got upset.*

Two, a columnist in my college paper wrote in response to a lecture on God and black suffering, "We're talking about black suffering again?" or something to that effect.*

My American literature professor used to make a point about subjectivity--that saying, "You can't understand this book because you're not ____ (black, white, female, etc.)" is a fallacy.

It's like saying you have to be white, male, middle class and born in the 1930's to get "Rabbit, Run" or have lived with seven men of dubious appellation to properly decode "Snow White."

Hurston writes in her essay "How it Feels to be Colored Me":

"Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me."

And so, maybe its not just black suffering we talk about, but human suffering.

Speaking of pleasure, this is one of my favorite scenes from the book:

"The sounds lulled Janie to soft slumber and she woke up with Tea Cake combing her hair and scratching the dandruff from her scalp. It made her more comfortable and drowsy.

'Tea Cake, where you git uh comb from tuh be combin' mah hair wid?'

'Ah brought it wid me. Come prepared tuh lay mah hands on it tonight.'"





*I mean, slavery was SO two centuries ago.