EW #60

3.5/3.75 stars

I'm glad I picked this book back up after DNF'ing ~30% a year or two ago. It's definitely tricky to get into and adjust to the dialogue, but there is so much richness to be found within this book that I think it was worth it. I enjoyed the commentary about love and especially how that plays out (or doesn't) for a Black woman in the 1900s (? 1800s?). Several poetic moments (including obviously the iconic first line) as well!

-Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board
-They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgment.
-There are years that ask questions and years that answer.
-There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought. Nanny entered this infinity of conscious pain again on her old knees.
Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.
-Janie pulled back a long time because he did not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees, but he spoke for far horizon. He spoke for change and chance. Still he hung back. The memory of Nanny was still powerful and strong.
-So when speakers stood up when the occasion demanded and said “Our beloved Mayor,” it was one of those statements that everybody says but nobody actually believes like “God is everywhere.” It was just a handle to wind up the tongue with.
-She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her. Then she went inside there to see what it was. It was her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered. But looking at it she saw that it never was the flesh and blood figure of her dreams. Just something she had grabbed to drape her dreams over.
She didn’t read books so she didn’t know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.
-Anybody that didn’t know would have thought that things had blown over, it looked so quiet and peaceful around. But the stillness was the sleep of swords.
-Here Nanny had taken the biggest thing God ever made, the horizon–for no matter how far a person can go the horizon is still a way beyond you–and pinched it into such a little bit of a thing that she could tie it about her granddaughter’s neck tight enough to choke her.
-When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb. Like all the other tumbling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine.
-Janie looked down on him and felt a soul-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place.
-Once having set up her idols and built altars to them it was inevitable that she would worship three. It was inevitable that she should accept any inconsistency and cruelty from her deity as all good worshippers do from theirs. All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshiped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshiped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood. Mrs. Turner, like all other believers had built an altar to the unattainable–Caucasian characteristics for all. Her god would smite her, would hurl her from pinnacles and lose her in deserts, but she would not forsake his altars.
-No expensive veils and robes for Janie this time. She went on in her overalls. She was too busy feeling grief to dress like grief.
-Then you must tell em dat love ain’t somethin’ lak uh grindstone dat’s de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.
-Tea Cake, with the sun for a shawl. Of course he wasn’t dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.