Hurston's folklore collections include Mules and Men (published in 1935), based on her field research in the American South and Tell My Horse (published in 1938), which describes folk customs in Haiti and Jamaica. As a fiction writer, Hurston is noted for her metaphorical language, her story-telling abilities and her interest in and celebration of Southern black culture in the United States. Her best known novel is Their Eyes Were Watching God (published in 1937), in which she tracked a Southern black woman's search, over 25 years and 3 marriages, for her true identity and a community in which she could develop that identity.

Other literary output includes such novels as Jonah's Gourd Vine

(1934) and Seraph on the Suwanee (1948) short stories, plays, journal articles and an autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road (1942). Hurston's work was not political in nature, but her characters' use of dialect, her manner of portraying black culture and her conservatism created controversy within the black community. Throughout her career she addressed issues of race and gender, often relating them to the search for freedom. In her later years, Hurston experienced health problems and she died impoverished and unrecognized by the literary community. Her writings, however, were rediscovered in the 1970s by a new generation of black writers, most notably Alice Walker. Many of Hurston's works were republished in 1995 in a two-volume set. Some previously unpublished material was also released.

As the title of the novel indicates, God plays a major part in the novel, but this God is not really the “Judeo-Christian” god. The book supplies an almost shrewd out look on the macrocosm: God is not a sole existence but a prevalent force. This occurrence is especially evident in the enchanted way that Hurston characterizes nature. At many different times, the sun, moon, sky, sea, horizon, and other demeanor of the natural world appear addicted with sanctity. The “God” in the title pertains to these unearthly forces throughout the globe, both magical and frightful, that Janie experiences. Her journey is an intangible one because her conclusive goal is to find where she stands in the world, recognize who she is, and be at amity with her aura. Subsequently, except for one brief reference to church in Chapter 12, an organized form of practiced religion ceases to appear in the novel. The theory of sacredness and being in touch with your inner self is always present, as the novel espouses a worldview rooted in folklore and mythology. As an anthropologist, Hurston collected rural mythology and folklore of blacks in America and the Caribbean. Many visions of mysticism that she presents in the novel—her haunting personification of Death, the idea of a sun-god, the horizon as a boundary at the end of the world—are lik

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