When I first read this book in high school, the poeticism and imagery of the first few chapters were enigmatically gripping. Finding a worn, paperback copy at a used book sale while in college, I dog-eared a dozen pages within the first 50 of the book and reread passages like “Janie saw her life like a tree in leaf…” and “So this is marriage!” over and over again. They are stunningly beautiful passages of writing.

Janie’s desire was simple. She wanted what she saw between the bees and the blossoms beneath the shade of the pear tree. More than romantic love, I believe she longed for a natural order that is good, untouched by mans influences and agendas. And from her worldview, that included love. But as the book progresses her understanding of her own desire gets confused and complicated and she’s forced to adapt and make sense of the misfortunes in her soul…which I’d completely forgotten about! Reading TEWWG, I realized I remembered nothing beyond the first three or four chapters.

At first, beyond the third chapter, it was a slog to get through. The vernacular dialogue meant I had to think about every word I read, but about a third of the way into the book, I got into a rhythm and the story and characters completely took over. In using vernacular, Hurston allows her characters to be as they are. What’s more, by having a contrast of poetic prose in the narration, she reveals the beauty of Janie’s thoughts. Even though Janie doesn’t speak poetically, she feels and thinks poetically and therefore is.

I had the pleasure of experiencing the story for — what felt like — the first time. It was easier to imagine this time around because the first time I read TEWWG, I lived in New Jersey. This time reading, I live in South Florida and am familiar with some of the places and events mentioned in the book. The authors final home is located less than 30 minutes from where I live now which inspired to do some digging.

Zora Neale Hurston is today considered one of the most prolific writers of the Harlem Renaissance, but not necessarily for her political actions and stances taken through her writing. Zora Neale Hurston is celebrated and remembered for giving historically marginalized characters a place in literature. She helped give them a voice. To her, their stories were simply worth telling, uprising or no uprising, political or not.

As an anthropologist, Zora Neale Hurston was keenly interested in depicting a cultural as it was, not thwarting it to fit a political agenda. TEWWG, in fact, was criticized for that reason. She chose to portray her characters as people, not as pawns in a race game, or civil leaders. Just people. Her stories naturally reveal issues that were apparent in the cultures and subcultures she wrote about (without spoiling anything, the reader will find this when certain characters are in Palm Beach), but the focus in TEWWG is always the inner life, the dreams, the hopes and day-to-day living of wonderfully ordinary people. She never imposes an agenda onto a character.

Her characters aren’t set up to demonstrate a problem. Instead, her novel invites the reader to pull up a seat and says, “Come, see how they live. Come see who they are.” From what I understood, this type of literature tended to fly under the radar in the Harlem Renaissance because it wasn’t particularly shocking, and TEWWG did for many years. Long term however, it’s a powerful method to create understanding and more empathetic relationships across cultures.