Hurston published her masterwork novel Their Eyes Were Watching God on September 18, 1937, now considered a cornerstone of American literature.
On September 18, 1937, J.B. Lippincott & Co. published Their Eyes Were Watching God, the novel that would become Zora Neale Hurston's most enduring literary achievement. Written in just seven weeks while Hurston was conducting anthropological fieldwork in Haiti, the novel tells the story of Janie Crawford, a Black woman's journey toward self-realization and voice across three marriages in early 20th-century Florida.
The novel was groundbreaking in its unflinching use of African American Southern dialect as a legitimate literary language and in its centering of a Black woman's interior emotional and sexual life—territory rarely explored with such depth and dignity in American fiction of the era. At the time, the book received mixed reviews; prominent contemporaries such as Richard Wright criticized it for not engaging more directly with racial protest and oppression, reflecting the era's tension between differing visions of Black literary purpose.
Largely overlooked and out of print for decades after Hurston's death, the novel was rediscovered and championed in the 1970s by writers including Alice Walker, leading to its reclamation as a foundational text of African American and feminist literature. Today it is taught widely in American schools and universities, praised for its lyrical prose, its exploration of Black womanhood, and its unapologetic celebration of Black vernacular culture. It stands as a landmark work that helped reshape the American literary canon.