First published in 1037, Their Eyes Are Watching God is Zora Neale Hurston's most highly acclaimed novel. A classic of black literature, it tells with haunting sympathy and piercing immediacy the story of Janie Crawford's evolving selfhood through three marriages. Fair-skinned and 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 in equal measure and gives her the chance to enjoy life without being one man's mule or another man's adornment. It is a tribute to the author's wisdom that though her story does not end happily, it does draw to a satisfying conclusion. Janie is one black woman who doesn't have to live lost in sorrow, bitterness, fear, or foolish romantic dreams, for Janie and the read have learned "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."