We are honored to present a collaboration with Arion Press in a limited edition of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. The volume is available in a fine press or deluxe addition, with 10 additional original embossed prints available separately. More information on purchasing and production details can be found at Arion Press.
A novel by Zora Neale Hurston
With artwork by Kenturah Davis
And an introduction by Emily Bernard
Zora Neale Hurston’s masterpiece Their Eyes Were Watching God was largely neglected at the time of its original publication in 1937 until Alice Walker’s recovery of Hurston in the 1970s catapulted the book into its rightful place in the pantheon of American letters. Recognized now as an indispensable part of the American canon, Hurston’s story of Janie Crawford is both a poignant literary portrait of black womanhood and a rigorous anthropological account of African-American life in the interwar South.
Arion’s edition of Their Eyes Were Watching God is animated by the distinctive style of Kenturah Davis’s drawing. Davis created “text drawings” that fuse language and image by writing and rewriting meaningful phrases from Hurston’s prose to build up textured portraits of Janie Crawford at different stages in her life. In addition, Davis has selected salient excerpts from Hurston’s text which appear as intimate commentary along the bottom of every page. This continuously running line—printed from over 100 plates reproducing Davis’s hand-written manuscript—flows from the first page to the last as a surrogate heartbeat for the novel.
50 embossed prints with chine collé, numbered and signed by the artist Kenturah Davis, are available for sale: 40 accompany the Deluxe edition and 10 are offered individually. “Here Was Peace” features a color photograph portrait of Janie Crawford’s character set beside a striking, blind-embossed passage from the closing lines of Hurston’s novel. These unique prints measure 12 x 14½ inches and are printed on heavyweight 300 gsm textured all-cotton Somerset, suitable for framing.